A Matter of Smash
by ThePinkrhin0
Summary: After a misguided attempt to spice up a match goes awry, the Smashers once again find themselves facing a mysterious foe. Will they come out on top? Or will the world go dark?
1. Chapter 1

Alph fiddled with his gloves as he waited for his turn to head into the arena. He was seated on a rather uncomfortable slatted wooden bench, far too tall for a small statured Koppaite such as himself- He'd actually needed a boost from Olimar to get up- In the slightly unglamorous backstage area of the arenas. His stomach churned with pre-fight nerves and nausea but no one else seemed to be feeling anything, Olimar sat to his left chatting away into his suit's communicator like he was simply popping down to the shops, their combined group of pikmin playing under the benches, and for the life of him Alph couldn't find anything to take his mind off it.

A tv attached to the wall played a live feed of the battle going on outside, and Alph finally turned his attention to it as one of Luigi's more grating screams played through his helmet's speakers. It was a teams day, and Team Mario played off against Team Kong on the little screen. Luigi was already down for the count, and Alph winced as Mario lost his last stock and thundered past the blast line, ending the match with a yell and a flash of red light.

"GAME!"

The results screen would have been a lot more entertaining without the knowledge that Team Pikmin would be gracing it next, in either winning or losing. Alph tapped Olimar's helmet a few times to get his attention, catching the tail end of his conversation as the captain unmuted his speakers to talk.

"-It seems we are up next," Olimar said warmly, "give my love to the children! I'll be seeing you soon!" with that, Olimar hung up and turned to Alph, asking "Are you ready?"

"Yes, I think-" Alph was cut short as he was abruptly dragged down by his helmet as Olimar jumped off the bench, the two of them banging into each other with the ringing sound of glass-on-glass, landing in a pile- Alph yelping as his life-support pack jammed uncomfortably into his spine "Oof! Ow! What was that for?"

"It wasn't me!" Olimar paused for a second, glancing upwards, "...It seems someone has tied our antenna together."

That 'someone' couldn't hold in his laughter any more, and Wario's signature "Waa ha ha!" floated across the room to them, the villain falling about himself with laughter, pointing and rolling around on the bench, gaining hardly a glance from Kirby, his team mate, as he kept laughing long after it had stopped being funny. Alph heard Olimar sigh heavily at the display as the pikmin helped them up and they got to work on the antenna.

A few minutes later and the pair were rushing down the corridor to the arena teleport with their squad of six in hot pursuit. In the end it had taken the combined efforts of Fox and Peach to free them, all to a soundtrack of Wario's uproarious laughter. Alph frowned sourly as he jogged, where did Wario get off acting like that anyway?

Olimar, already out of breath, told him to ignore it "Wario does that to everyone," He gasped "Why, the first thing he did to me when we met was attempt to steal my helmet! Luckily, he didn't succeed..."

Alph was briefly struck with an unpleasant vision of Wairo holding his own helmet just out of reach, cackling as he flailed and choked in the oxygen atmosphere, before they finally reached the teleporters and warped to the arena.

The teleports had a dual purpose- One was to allow any arena to be reached from a single area, very useful when you're sending fighters across dimensions every single match, and the second was to allow everyone to enter in their own unique way. Mario jumped out of a pipe, Samus stepped out of a doorway, and Alph, Olimar and their pikmin hopped out of the rickety Hocotate Ship, which disappeared in a puff of smoke behind them, onto the squishy ground of the Garden of Hope. In the moments before the match started, Alph grinned despite himself- This was their stage! A home field advantage. Maybe the match wouldn't be so bad after all.

And then the smile fell off his face as the opposing team entered. Team Garlic, composed of Wario and Kirby. Their entrance was a bit of a team effort, in which Kirby crashed into Wario's bike, sending himself spiraling into the scenery and Wario hard into the ground. Wario got up, brushed himself off, spotted Team Pikmin and broke into a renewed bout of laughter. Alph bristled as they were counted in, the antenna incident still as fresh in his mind as it apparently was in Wario's.

3…

2…

1…

 **GO!**

Wario leapt onto his motorbike with an unexpected agility, hitting the throttle and gunning it forwards with an enormous roar from the engine. Alph tweeted his whistle, him and his pikmin rolling to the side in a dodge, Oilmar choosing to jump overhead instead, smacking Kirby to to the ground mid-flight with a red pikmin- The impact causing a small, fiery explosion.

At the same time, Wario ploughed into Alph's back.

Thankfully, Master Hand had done a masterful job applying all kinds of protections and spells on the competitors to keep them from actual, deadly harm. So being run over from behind did not break any bones, destroy any life support, or smash any helmets- It just sent him flying into the air with a cry of alarm and the kind of bruises you're definitively going to feel tomorrow to land in the sudden darkness of Kirby's mouth. In the constricting space, with pikmin squished against his sides, Alph kicked out as hard as he could, if he was quick, he could pummel his way out.

It didn't work, Kirby swallowed, and for a moment Alph found himself floating in an enormous starfield before being unceremoniously spat back into the dirt.

Face to the ground, he heard the sound of someone breaching the blast zone around the arena, thankfully nothing more than a particularly fancy teleport- Acting to send fighters back into the arena, and keep anything unwanted out.

Spurred on, Alph rolled to his feet just in time to dodge a faux pikmin, courtesy of Kirby. The pink orb threw another one, and Alph chucked one of his own to intercept it- It's death cry still bothered him, though he knew it wasn't really dead, just sent away for a touch of extra realism. Alph rolled again, smacking Kirby away from behind, and glanced up as a platform rolled in.

Wario hopped off- Letting Alph breathed a sigh of relief, charged up a shot, and whacked Wario from beneath the moment the plumber dropped close enough, hitting hard enough to send him flying back into the air, Olimar running past and smacking Kirby with a purple pikmin, almost sending him toppling over the edge.

The two ended up back-to-back, Wario approaching Alph with the angry look of a man who'd just been electrocuted by a sentient yellow carrot, Kirby on their other side, still sporting his copy ability.

Then, an item dropped.

Taken aback at it's sudden appearance, Alph blinked, confused.

Part of an actual competition, rather than a casual brawl, the rules for the fight stated, in no unclear terms: 'Two stock, omega mode, no items.'

Yet there it was. The assist trophy dropped between Alph and Wario, kicking up a little puff of dust as it hit the floor.

There was something... Off about it. Maybe it was the lighting, but it it seemed to be just the wrong colour. The light filtering through the giant trees reflected off it the wrong way.

Taking advantage of Alph's hesitation, Wario, noticing nothing, dived for it. Large hands scooping the trophy off the ground and holding it in the air, cackling.

Alph gasped, if he used it, he'd invalidate the match! "Wait, don't-"

The assist trophy didn't shatter. It melted.

Wario yelled in disgust as thick, black goop flowed down his arm "Hey! Gettoff!" The portly man started to jump around, flailing his arm, trying to get the gunk off and shouting all the while.

He made such a scene that both Olimar and Kirby broke out of their showdown to stand and watch with Alph, confused.

After a few more seconds of hopping about and shouting the black stuff sunk into Wario's arm, like it had never been there at all.

Wario himself stared, slack-jawed at where it had been, unmoving.

Olimar cleared his throat "Wario? Are you quite alright?"

The plumber didn't move. If anything, his mouth had grown wider.

Wait, Alph realised, his stomach dropping like a rock. It _was_ growing wider.

Wario's jaw was distending, so slow at first they didn't notice, but more and more rapidly with every second, disturbing clicks, cracks and pops issuing from the joints. And inside…

An eyeball stared out, taking up every inch of space inside Wario's mouth.

It swiveled, staring at the horrified group. Wario's own eyes rolled back into his head as he jerked towards them, twitching erratically, dark lumps of goo sliding down his chin and hitting the dirt with soft thumps.

These lumps opened their own little eyes and scurried away, toppling off the sides of the stage like lemmings off a cliff, hitting the blast line with a series of little pops and disappearing.

"Oh no!" Kirby spat out his copy ability, the little star bouncing away and off the edge of the stage, and stepped in front of Olimar and Alph, dropping into a fighting stance, he held his little arms out in an attempt to keep the two astronauts behind him.

"W-What's wrong with him?" Alph hissed, refusing to take his eyes off Wario and his continuing advance.

"I'm not sure, i-it looks like Dark Matter!"

"Dark _what-_ "

The moment Kirby uttered those words, Wario charged- Bowling the three over and skidding to a stop behind them, motorbike suddenly roaring out of nowhere for another go as everyone dived out of the way and the fight began again, three on one.

As he tried to hit Wario off his bike without being run over again, dodging as an unlucky Kirby found himself flung into the air, Alph wondered why no one had pulled them out of the match yet. He'd seen incidents more minor than this bring fights to very abrupt ends indeed.

A lucky hit from Kirby destroyed the bike. A second from Alph sent Wario flying over the edge, and a third from Olimar spiked him into the blast zone- An explosion of light and colour marking his defeat.

The trio crowded at the edge, peering down at the semi-transparent barrier that stood between them and a very long drop.

….

….

"… Should we go after him?"

–

The teleporter room was a mess.

Out of the eight pads set up in the room, two had been outright destroyed. The rest were in states of disarray ranging from 'a little dirty' to 'thrown five feet away from where they'd been installed'.

Alph popped in without too much issue, his boots hitting the ground so heavily he stumbled forwards with a grunt of pain and almost fell off the pad, his little squad of two pikmin falling on their faces behind him.

Kirby appeared as the Koppite stooped to help his colourful friends to their feet- Materializing three feet in the air and not quite managing to catch himself before he hit the ground face-first with a resounding squeak like a children's toy.

Across the room, Olimar popped into existence on a pad caked so thickly in burnt black gunk that he appeared already buried knee deep. Not because the gunk was unreasonably deep, no, Alph and Olimar just so happened to be among the shortest people in the competition. His pikmin were lucky enough to land on top, and light enough to stay there as the captain struggled to free himself.

It was too dark, something must have taken out the lights- And with the glow of the teleporters already fading as they shut down, Alph took it upon himself to find a light. Navigating by the relatively meagre blue light of his beacon, he stepped around computers, both of the smashed and un-smashed variety, everything bathed in an unnatural blue light: The computers, the wall, the light switch, the figures standing in the doorway to the outside corridor, pointing something yellow and glowing at him.

Alph flicked the switch- Well, he jumped while holding a pikmin and the pikmin flicked the switch- Bathing the room in florescent light, the sudden whining buzz of the bulbs making one rounded ear flick as he slowly turned to find Samus' gun pressed to the glass between his eyes with a ringing, metallic, 'dink'.

"Eep!"

"Whoa! No, no, no!" Kibry came running, stubby little hands waving in the air as he popped his puffy form tightly between Alph and Samus, forcing her to take a few steps back. "Don't attack _us,_ where's Wario?"

Samus pointed silently at the doorway, her gun still trained on Alph's face.

In the light, there was only one figure. One figure, and a trophy.


	2. Chapter 2

The figure turned out to just be Sonic, who dropped out of a fighting stance and joined them when Samus announced no one was possessed or otherwise going to attack and holstered her gun- To Alph's great relief- Spinning it between her fingers expertly like a character from a film.

The trophy was none other than Wario.

Back turned, under the electric lights his washed-out colours were unusually grey, even for a trophy.

He could be mistaken for a statue.

Looking around at the trashed room, the inert Wario, and the enormous quantities of goo thrown about, Kirby asked the obvious question-"What _happened?"_

"We could ask you the same thing." Samus responded "Everything cut out when he-" She jabbed a finger at Wario "-grabbed that assist trophy. Soon enough, these little one-eyed blobs poured in and started driving people crazy, it's been chaos ever since." A far-off explosion punctuated her sentence, giving Sonic a chance to cut in.

"We followed those blobby things back here and the next thing we know, Wario's tearing up the place! We beat him, then he spat out more of those blobs and went… Well, like that." The hedgehog gestured at the doorway "Then you guys turned up."

Peering around Samus at the trophy, Alph found himself seized with the kind of excitement you can only feel when you're about to copy something from a movie. "But, that's okay, right?" He asked as he stepped right past Sonic, towards Wario.

He'd heard about the Subspace incident from Olimar, (Although the moral of the story always seemed to be 'stay away from Captain Falcon' rather than covering actual events) and ROB had been kind enough to show him a couple of clips from his databanks- Monsters they'd fought, places they'd been, a huge group of fighters reactivating each other's trophies amidst a swirling void, ready to face an unknown foe.

Captivating stuff.

But despite how much he'd heard about it, and how common it seemed to have been, Alph had never turned into a trophy himself, nor had he ever seen it happen to anyone else.

He bent, and reached for the stand. "We can just-"

" _ **NO!"**_

Alph bolted upright like he'd been electrocuted "Aaah! Why, what's wrong?"

"Don't touch that!" Samus snapped, crossing the space between them in just a few steps.

"Why not?" Alph stared up at her incredulously "If- If we bring him back, he can help us, right?"

"It… It doesn't work like that any more."

"...What do you mean?"

"I'm afraid Mater Hand changed the rules." Olimar had finally managed to detach himself from the telepad, suit covered up to the knees in a thick layer of black gunk- Some larger chunks clinging to various seams, and wide smears marring his gloves.

For some reason, the pikmin followed much further behind than usual.

"With the way the trophy system was abused during the last tournament, we had to find a new way to mark defeat..." Olimar slipped quickly into what some people called 'lecture mode'- Going into such unnecessary detail and using enough unnecessarily large words for so much longer than necessary he could very well be reciting an essay on the subject.

"-Now the system simply exists as an emergency measure, if an individual is injured beyond the point of simple defeat, almost to death, they will become a trophy to avoid further damage and to heal- A process that could very well take weeks- Meaning, if we reactivate someone in such a state, such as Wario here... It could… Well... kill them."

Alph nodded politely through the entire lecture, and continued to nod for a good minute after the captain had finished talking. "Oh, right. But… Why didn't anyone mention this before? It seems kind of im…portant…?" A repeating, grating, snore dragged Alph's attention away before he could even finish his sentence.

Sonic and Kirby had fallen asleep in a pile against the wall.

And they were both snoring.

Loudly.

"Honestly! That's just rude." Olimar huffed, hands on hips.

Samus, who'd been staring fixedly at a blob of dried goop on the opposite wall for the last five minutes, ever-so-gently nudged Kirby off of Sonic's chest, before firing her gun three times into the floor next to the hedgehog's ear.

Alph flinched, and Sonic very almost lodged himself into the ceiling "Yow!"

With everyone up, willingly or unwillingly, Samus holstered her weapon and headed for the door. Edging around Wario's trophy, which took up almost the entire doorway, she called back over her shoulder "Now everyone's up to speed, we need to get moving before we're attacked again."

Alph didn't need telling twice and jogged out after her "Where are we going?"

"To get my suit. It's in my ship."

"Oh!" Olimar popped up on Samus' other side, gesturing at the fast-drying gunk attached to his clothes, "That's lucky, I need to visit my own ship to clean this- What did Kirby call it? Dark Matter?- Off my suit, I feel it's not very healthy to keep around."

–

Like most things, getting to the ship turned out to be easier said than done.

Tiny, one-eyed blobs of Dark Matter congregated in every patch of shadow. Forming rustling masses in corners, underneath things, anywhere they could escape the glare of the lights. Not attacking, just clustering, leaning out as far as they could whenever someone walked by, waving thin tendrils.

A bit creepy, but ultimately harmless.

"There sure are a lot of them."

It wasn't a long walk, by any means. Down a corridor, turn a corner, go past the waiting room where the whole mess had started, down some stairs, head outside, and it should be right in front of you.

Except, in the waiting room, somebody had turned out the lights.

No one else gave the empty room any thought, but Alph paused.

In the flickering half-light cast by the little TV in the corner, now showing nothing but static, something had _shifted._

"Oh, no. Um, excuse me, guys-?" Alph didn't get to finish as a ball of Dark Matter the size of his head came catapulting out of the darkness like some demonic football, it's enormous eye flashing like a cat's in the glare of the lights.

Thankfully, months of being attacked randomly by wildlife gave Alph very good reactions. Reaching back on instinct alone, he grasped a pikmin- Blue, judging from the cold, wet feel of it's skin through his gloves, and swung the little thing with a strangled squeak of alarm like a baseball bat.

Unfortunately, a pikmin is **not** a baseball bat.

Instead of being hit away like any sensible ball, the blob simply expanded on contact, wrapping around and totally enveloping the pikmin.

Finding it suddenly, tremendously heavy, Alph couldn't help but drop it, staring in horror as the pikmin writhed on the floor for a few seconds, the remains of his squad squeaking and chirping in terror, both of them clinging to his arms as all of a sudden the pikmin fell still, stood up on shaking feet, and screeched.

It's little face was dominated by a singular eye, it's speckled, apple-like skin split and warped where it had been forced out of it's small, mouth-like gill. It didn't stop screaming as it started to advance, the sound boring into Alph's ears through the glass of his helmet, through the communication speakers installed in his suit, which warped the sound so badly it was almost worse- A cacophony overlain with metallic white-noise. A terrible feedback loop.

The pikmin sped up, forcing Alph to stumble backwards- It was shaking, so hard and violent it almost looked like it was going to-

The possessed pikmin popped like a pustule.

A spray of black goo covered the front of Alph's helmet. Noise still rang in his ears as he stared at the dark splatter it had left on the ground, breath hitching in his throat, the pikmin behind him, protected from the spray by the shadow of their leader, desperately tugged at his arms but Alph found himself rooted- _Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no-_

Alph snapped back to reality as Samus shot the second blob out of the air just inches in font of his face as somebody else, probably Sonic, picked him up under the armpits like a toddler and deposited him a little further down the corridor, out of reach.

" _Okay_ , just stand there for a second."

Sonic zipped back just in time to kick another one out of the air, sending it sailing into a window with the kind of sound you'd expect something with the consistency of jelly to make when kicked into a window.

The splat almost disguised the heavy thunk of a black-stained hand reaching from inside the dark room, and grabbing the wooden doorframe with a white knuckle grip.

Donkey Kong stepped into the light. His fur matted with black, one hand held another large glob of Dark Matter- It's eye swiveling madly between opponents- The other released the doorframe, marks left in the wood from his grip alone, and beat a quick tattoo against his chest with a bellow of anger, making the eyeball that had sprouted there wobble grossly in it's socket.

DK threw the ball of matter directly at Samus' face, forcing the bounty hunter to duck and roll, peppering his legs with shots and letting the ball impact the wall harmlessly behind her, where it oozed slowly to the floor.

Donkey Kong raised one arm to block a kick from Sonic, knocking the hedgehog to the floor, and outstretched his other arm, palm out. Matter ran through his fur like blood through veins, coalescing into another black orb in his hand- Which he immediately tried to slam dunk directly into Sonic's face.

His famed speed came to his rescue as he rolled sideways, just narrowly missing the resulting splash.

Samus took the chance to shoot rapid-fire at the eyeball, forcing Donkey Kong to call off the attack and protect his chest with his hands. Exploiting this vulnerability, Kirby only got in a few punches before DK ducked back into the dark room and out of sight.

From inside, Donkey Kong threw out another blob, which Kirby inhaled harmlessly- Pulling a face like he'd just been forced to swallow garbage.

"This isn't really working!"

The pink puffball cast around the corridor for something as another ball of gunk flew out of the darkness and bounced off the already filthy window, forcing Samus and Sonic to scramble out of the way as it ricocheted like a deadly bouncy ball.

Kirby's eyes eventually fell on Olimar and his squad. Keen to keep his pikmin safe from a horrifying, scream-y death, the captain had fallen back defensively between DK and Alph.

Kirby wasted no time running over with such incredible urgency Olimar actually took a step back in surprise, "Kirby, do you need somet-"

Kirby grabbed and swallowed a pikmin in a single motion- So fast it didn't even get a chance to squeak.

Before Olimar could even open his mouth to voice a protest- Something the tiny astronaut had an abundance of- The corridor filled with a rush of leaves.

Kirby spun in place, a delicate headdress of greenery growing out of his head- Short branches growing buds and sticks and leaves in the shape of a circlet at such speed it was like watching an artful time-lapse.

With the surge of green came the sweet scent of pine, washing away the heavy, acrid smell of goo- So strong it even found its way through suit filters and air scrubbers.

He turned on his toe, directing the stream with a paw. Flying past faces and just short of noses, everyone froze as they noticed the leaves were not only sharp as razors, but knife shaped and brutally serrated.

With a gesture, they sailed into the darkened room with a series of brutal thuds.

...

A wheeze, followed immediately by the sound of somebody violently vomiting gallons of gunk let anyone listening know the leaves were perfectly on target.

A muted flash from inside the room, and Donkey Kong's trophy toppled forwards out of the doorway, a black puddle pooling underneath him.

"Whoa." Sonic breathed, leaning forwards to inspect the trophy.

It was riddled with little dents, scratches and nicks from the barrage of weaponized greenery, but apart from that, undamaged. Not even a smear of black remained, as if all the goo had simply abandoned ship.

Something shaped like a poor description of a hand thrust abruptly out of the puddle, groping wildly as a twisting, boneless arm and shoulder emerged after it. It didn't get far before Kirby liberally applied more leaves, splattering it across the floor in lots and lots of little clumps.

The puddle went inert, and stayed that way.

Samus wrinkled her nose and shook a splatter off her foot "Disgusting."

"Yes, very." Olimar crossed his arms, frowning. "Kirby, my pikmin, please."

"Huh?" Kirby tilted his head, and, in consequence, his whole body- Before going cross-eyed trying to look at the leafy crown on his head "Oh! Yeah, sure!"

The crown glowed, popped off Kirby's head and plopped onto the ground in front of him, eventually reforming back into a very confused pikmin.

It held it's hands in front of it's eyes, felt it's face from it's stalk to the tip of it's red, pointed nose- It jumped up, span in a circle, spotted Kirby then screamed and ran behind Olimar, grabbing his arm and clinging to it like a lifeline.

" _Thank_ you _._ " Olimar sighed, patting the poor pikmin kindly.

Stepping away, he turned his attention to Alph, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm alright. I'm just… A little bit shaken, I've seen pikmin die, but not like..." Alph let the end of the sentence hang in the air.

"No, neither have I." Olimar shook his head, glancing over at their pikmin as they chattered together like nothing was wrong "We'll have to be much more careful with them."


	3. Chapter 3

Finally outside and surrounded only by signs of fighting- Burn marks, broken windows, dried patches of black goo, they managed to reach the ships without any other incidents.

Behind the big building where all the work went into making the fights, where people were sent out to exotic battlefields, where computer systems, magic and a mix of the two meticulously monitored battles, while people from all over the multiverse filmed and edited the events into all kinds of entertainment, there sat what was essentially a normal car park. And there, amongst the cars and go-karts and Wario's six spare motorbikes, next to a single Arwing, sat Samus' Gunship.

As Samus suited up, Olimar headed back to his ship to scrape off some of the goo clinging to his own suit. After a quick discussion, he and Alph had decided the it would be best if he took the pikmin along with him, back to their Onions, where they'd be safe.

Not appreciating being planted on tarmac, the Onions resided on a grassy field a short walk away-Alongside the S.S Drake and Hocotate Ship- Alph and Olimar's ships, respectively.

Although, Captain Olimar couldn't help but drag his feet a little on the way over. The path was grassy, the sky was clear, and a couple of trees swayed and rustled in the warm breeze. It always amazed him how the planet was almost entirely identical to the home of the pikmin, except practically in miniature- Plants that would tower above him there hardly growing to waist hight.

As the squad of five bundled past after a rather alarmed butterfly, he picked up the pace. No time for sightseeing if he wanted time to clear away the gunk making it's home on his suit.

The Hocotate Ship- Unfortunately, in the captain's opinion, equipped with an insufferable AI- Wasn't exactly keen on the state of said suit and announced the fact noisily over loudspeaker the moment they arrived and continued to announce as the pikmin clambered up the Onion's legs and disappeared.

"Bzzt! Your very presence is offending my odour sensors! Surely you aren't planning to tread that through _my_ interior?"

Olimar only ended up treading it through the airlock. Anything else clinging to his shoes ended up scraped onto a decorative dog-shaped welcome mat he'd picked up last time he visited Hocotate.

Helmet put to the side safely, he stuffed the suit into the washing machine, poured in some powder, and set it running.

Satisfied that would get the job done, Olimar set off to dig out a spare suit.

As he turned his back, something shot across the floor- Just in the corner of his eye- Making him twist around in alarm so fast he almost tripped.

A quick scan of the room turned up nothing, so Olimar turned once again, ever so slowly, back towards his room.

Whatever it was, it didn't move quietly- He followed it with his ears, waited until the noise was just behind him and whipped around to find… Absolutely nothing.

"Hello? Who's there?" Seeing nothing amiss, the Captain stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, trying to call out any pikmin that managed to sneak on board with him.

A rustle of movement behind him, and something tugged gently at his sock. Olimar let out a quiet sigh of relief, to think, for a moment there he was worried something malevolent had gotten on board!

He looked down, smiling.

The welcome mat blinked back.

–

Olimar took significantly longer to get back than he said he would.

Long enough for Samus to step out of her ship, suited and booted in her bright orange, yet still rather intimidating power suit, and bring everyone's heads together to hash out a workable plan of action, drawing heavily on Kirby's other encounters with their current enemy.

In fact, they even had time to come up with a backup plan that involved the Chaos Emeralds, Kirby's copy ability and the Drake's fruit juicer.

As he waited, Alph quietly weighed the baseball bat Samus had given him in his hands, a second lying at his feet. Next to him, Kirby told an animate story about the last time he'd fought Dark Matter, complete with sound effects and dialogue, paws waving madly as he gestured "An'- an' _then,_ Dedede started floating!" Kirby paused long enough for his captive audience to gasp appropriately, "An' this big eye opened on his belly and started spitting stuff at me! But never fear, I had fire power! So I spat a big, biiiig fireball at him like this, WOOSH! An' then-"

With noise like somebody running headlong through a bush rather than take a slightly more roundabout path, Olimar finally jogged out from between the trees, waving one-handedly and interrupting the story loudly and abruptly, "Greetings! The Pikmin are safely sleeping in their Onion, and I think you'll find I am looking _much_ better." He gave a little spin and indeed, his suit was clean as a whistle.

And the whistle looked like it had been polished to a shine.

Kirby looked only slightly put out by being cut off and cheerfully chimed in with a "Hiii!" as everyone greeted the captain.

As he joined the little circle, Alph handed Olimar the baseball bat. "Here, these are for us." the engineer stooped as he spoke, picking up the other bat for his own use.

The bats, designed for someone significantly taller, were almost as big as Alph and Olimar themselves- Although the same could be said about the Pikmin, leaving Alph with little doubt he could do just as much damage with a nice solid piece of wood.

"Oh, thank you." Olimar said gratefully, taking the bat and giving it a gentle swing, to get a feel for the thing, before stepping back and craning his neck to look up at Samus "So..." he started conversationally, "Do we have a plan?"

"Hm? Oh, yes." Through her helmet, Samus' voice sounded rough, filtered and unrecognizable. "We don't have access to any of the weapons Kirby used to defeat this 'Dark Matter' in the past, but we do have a few of our own. Kirby wants us to check on the Fountain of Dreams to see if the Star Rod can help us, which we'll do first. After that, we need to get some Smash Balls, then find and destroy the source of this infection."

Sonic rolled his eyes and started tapping his foot impatiently as Olimar slowly nodded along, "Seems simple enough, but how will we get to the Fountain?"

"The teleporters, if they're still working. If not, my ship will-" Samus' voice was drowned out by an enormous BOOM and a blast of wind that almost knocked Alph and Olimar off their feet, and sent Kirby flying bodily into the air as Sonic rocketed away without even a single word of warning.

"What was that abou-"

Sonic returned a moment later with another huge gust of wind "The teleporters are working, let's go!"

"I wasn't- Oh, if you insist." Samus set off, waving everyone to follow her. "There's more to it than that, but I'll explain on the way."

Nothing attacked them as they crossed the car park.

Nothing so much as moved as they pushed open a door that had been half-melted by a fireball.

In fact, they didn't see much of anything. At all.

The lights inside were all smashed, the broken glass of the bulbs cracking underfoot and sparkling in the blue, red and white lights shone by various torches and beacons.

The windows, too, were blacked out by a thick layer of slime.

"For the record," Sonic said, shining the weak light of his phone through the empty doorway of the waiting room, casting foggy reflections off the still-wet, leaf studded puddle of goo on the ground "It wasn't like this when I was just here."

Samus turned her headlight on Sonic, almost dislodging Kirby from the seat he'd taken on her helmet with the movement and making him squint "You're sure you didn't blow the lights out with a sonic boom?" Her quirked eyebrow was practically audible.

"Oh, _totally._ I also took the time to smear this stuff all over the windows."

As the rest of the group walked off, Alph paused at the empty doorway, just about illuminating the inside with his waving blue light. "Um, where did Donkey-"

A head poked around the corner, "Keep up, Alph!"

"-Ah! Coming!" Alph ran off after them, his desire to not be left behind in a dark, glass-filled corridor winning over any mystery he wished to investigate.

–

Thankfully, no more damage had come to the teleports.

Without pause, Samus herded them through the empty doorway and directed everyone onto working pads. She bent over a computer, filling the room with rapid-fire keyboard tapping.

Alph peered over her shoulder as best he could from his position, while he couldn't understand the script onscreen, it was interesting to watch.

The tapping became overlain with an increasingly loud whine from under his feet as the device started up, a round blue glow illuminating the telepad and cutting through the gloom, throwing stretched shadows against the walls and giving the ceiling a blotched black and blue pattern.

Samus jumped onto an empty circle of blue as the humming reached a fever pitch.

All this was normal for the 'porters, of course. Alph had only been on a few times, most of the stadiums he'd visited were reachable by more conventional means, but the lights and noise didn't phase him.

As the circle underneath him turned violet, Alph could almost hear the 'safety talk' he'd been given on his first day.

" _Now, when it changes-a colour like this, you_ cannot _get off or on, okay?"_ Mario had been very, very clear on that point, _"You could get very, very hurt that-a way."_

Alph wasn't keen to discover exactly **how** hurt he could get.

So, when the enormous, spiderlike THING dropped from the ceiling, he froze.

Nobody moved. Nobody could even risk moving.

It regarded them for a moment with an eye ringed by teeth, and stepped towards the computer console on legs too thick and too misplaced for any spider- Some too short to touch the ground, some in the wrong _place_ to touch the ground by any normal means- Hanging off it's awkward, twisted form uselessly.

It raised it's front pair, clenched it's fists- Fists! It had hands!- And brought them down as the teleporters finished charging and the room disappeared with an impact unseen and unheard but definitively felt.

–

Alph's first glimpse of the Fountain was through the window of the illusionary Ship.

Still operating under torment rules, they were forced through the motions of their stage entrances. Feet hitting the mirror-like water with muted splashes, Alph gripped his bat until his knuckles went white under his gloves, fighting the urge to pluck up a squad of pikmin until the announcing voice declared 'GO!', and he had free movement once again.

With that movement he stared, slack-jawed, at the Fountain of Dreams.

The sky shone with nebulae, shades of green, blue, pink and more mingling and mixing in an ever-moving mosaic- Constantly flowing over and into each other like the water beneath his feet, stretching as far as he could see and speckled with millions of stars in every imaginable colour and beyond.

The water was brilliant silver, reflecting everything above like a perfect mirror. Jets of it jumping and leaping about like playful fish.

All of this was surrounded by lush vegetation in shades of pink and purple- Alph even caught flashes of jewel-like birds hopping between the branches.

And in the middle, amongst the finery, sat a marble pedestal, topped with a bowl inlaid with intricate silver swirls. Water flowed out of the bowl, not with a splash, but with a sound like trickling sand.

Along with water, the bowl was filled with an inviting golden glow, little stars popping out of it occasionally like bubbles.

The whole breathtaking, _eyepopping,_ view was slightly ruined by Samus pacing a rut along the middle of the fountain.

While Samus herself was stoic, her reflection wrung it's hands nervously as it followed at her feet.

She sighed, looking up to find all eyes on her. "I'm calling my ship. It might take a while to get here, but it's better than discovering there aren't any failsafes." She gestured to the sky, and for a second Alph glanced up confused at the swirling galaxies overhead.

Then, he realized with a jolt- The omnipresent transparent box representing the blast lines was gone.

Meaning, the only way off was to wait.

Sonic left to scout out the rest of the island, returning less than two seconds later to announce it was, unsurprisingly, tiny.

Alph walked to Kirby, who stood just underneath the bowl of the fountain, letting a stream of silver water pour over his head. As they stood next to eachother, their reflections shook hands- Spurring Alph to break the silence "Why do they do that?"

"Huh?"

"Why are our reflections moving by themselves?"

"Oh!" Kirby leaned over and peered down at his own, which blew a raspberry up at him, making water splash in his face and causing Alph's to break down into silent, bubbling giggles. "Dream magic."

"Dream magic?"

"Yeah!" Kirby nodded enthusiastically "This is where all dreams come from! It's full of magic. If you wanna know how it works you gotta ask Meta Knight though, he knows _everything_."

Alph snorted as their reflections started pulling faces up at them "I will!"

At some point during their chat, Olimar had approached from the other side of the bowl, his reflection obscured by ripples as he bounced constantly from the soles of his feet to the toes and back again. "Kirby! Alph! This place is truly marvellous, isn't it?"

"It is!" Kirby cheered, jumping up and down until his reflection fell to the same fate as Olimar's "We should all have a picnic here sometime! With cake, ooh, and sandwiches… And tomatoes!"

"That's a good idea." Olimar smiled, then looked up at the bowl- Which practically towered over the three of them "Say, is that where the Star Rod is?"

Kirby gasped, clapping his paws together "Yeah! I almost forgot!" He smiled brightly at the two of them, "Wait there, I'll grab it." With that, Kirby hopped into the air and floated upwards until he disappeared over the lip.

"Do you think it'll be like the ones we use in matches?" Alph asked, idly.

"Oh, definitively. Although I imagine many times more powerful."

Alph nodded, looking down at his reflection only to find it rendered unreadable by ripples "… Are you alright, captain? You're a little… Restless."

"Oh yes, yes. I'm fine, just keen to get moving again, that's all."

Alph nodded, his attention pulled away as Kirby touched back down with the Star Rod.

It was _exactly_ like the ones they used in matches, except somehow more real- An invisible quality the replicas lacked that made this rod noticably sharper, brighter and all round more there.

Kirby held it above his head proudly, red and white stripes winding up the shaft like a candy cane, the gleaming golden star on top radiating an aura of pleasant warmth, even through a space suit.

"Amazing!" Olimar held his hand out to Kirby, nodding at the rod with a small smile "… Can I?"

"Sure!" Kirby dropped it into his waiting hand with a cheerful beam, "It's pretty, right?"

"Indeed it is." The captain turned the rod in his hands, examining it at every angle, even going as far as holding the star in front of his eyes for a better look, squinting into the light- Before finally giving a satisfied nod. "It really is something." he said, distracted, for a brief moment his eyes slipping past the rod in his hands for a second and staring, unfocused, at the floor "It's almost a shame."

"A shame?" Kirby's smile dropped a little "How's it a shame?"

Olimar didn't answer.

He stepped out of reach, and snapped the rod in two.

" **No!** " Kirby screamed, clapping his hands over his mouth- Alph adding in his own yell of "Captain!" as Olimar stared down at the broken wand in his hands.

"Olimar, why did you do that?" Samus' asked, her voice carefully measured.

"I… Don't know." He looked positively ill, suddenly washed-out and pale in the silver light. "I'm not sure- I don't- I- I'm not- Why-"

Olimar's reflection, visible now without his movement, stared red-eyed up out of the water, it's gaze boring into anyone who dared to look, somehow leaking colour into the fountain, darkening the water around it like thick ink until, all at once, the fountain turned black. Olimar himself choked, splattering goo against the inside of his helmet, even more creeping out of his mouth in chunks and tendrils, forcing his face to distend horrifically as a ball of it inflated like a balloon in a manner that might have been funny in any other situation, but now only served to highlight how wrong things had turned. It kept growing larger and larger until an enormous bloodshot eyeball took up the entirety of his helmet, smearing grossly against the glass as it twisted to look at the assembled people.

Alph's stomach dropped like a rock.

It stared at Kirby, forcing eye-contact, and shattered the wand in it's hands until the Star Rod was nothing but a glittering pile of pieces floating gently towards the edge of the fountain.

Olimar's reflection, looking more healthy than the real thing at the moment and the only thing visible in the water, desperately tried to grab the chunks of rod as they drifted away.

Behind him, Alph could hear the sound of Samus' arm cannon charging up a shot.

Beside him, Kirby's shocked expression hardened, "We need to the pieces to fix the rod! Don't let them float away!"

"I'm on it!" Sonic leapt into action, diving for the bright floating chunks as they drifted towards the edge of the fountain.

Oil- No, the Dark Matter thing, had goop leaking from the seams. His life-support, the join between his helmet and suit, his whistle, any and every possible exit ran with it, making the black water at his feet shift and ripple like it was full of writhing eels.

A tendril of the stuff lifted out and tore the bowl right off its pedestal, sending it flying just as Sonic skidded to a stop to grab a piece that had gone by him.

It hit.

Hard.

Sonic flew off the edge with a fading scream and disappeared from sight.

"Sonic!" Samus' shot went wide, missing by meters as she jumped out of the way of another tendril. They kept coming, forcing Alph, Kirby and Samus closer to the edge, unable to get an attack in edgeways as the entire fountain started to tremble beneath their feet from the frenzied movement, Alph readying his bat as-

The ground crumbled beneath him, and he fell.

And kept falling and falling and falling, passing far beyond any boundaries the stage might have once had.

Up above, the Fountain of Dreams collapsed into a mass of dirty black clouds that seemed to suck the light and colour from the brilliant stars and nebulae themselves.

From somewhere below the sound of an argument drifted up, becoming louder and louder as he fell until he could make out the words.

"Apologizing doesn't fix it!"

Then, ever so briefly, he found himself level with the two Hands- At that speed just twin streaks of white, Master Hand dragging a struggling Crazy Hand along by his pinky finger like a child being dragged by his ear "The fight was boring!"

With the pair above him now, Alph only just heard Master Hand's enraged squawk "I- WHAT? No it wasn't!" Before the two became nothing but far-away blotches who were then swallowed up by the black clouds.

Alph wondered how long he was going to fall before he hit something.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

Alph hit something.

Something soft, pink, and squeaky.

Before he could slip away, Kirby grabbed Alph's arm and puffed up twice his normal size, bringing them both to a gentle halt in the sea of stars.

Up above, flashes of light and deep, thundering explosions started to emanate from the cloud like a storm.

Alph swallowed, only just realising how dry his throat was. Every now and again, a flash would illuminate a silhouette against the clouds- A series of still images chronicling a battle between the Hands and… Something else.

They watched, Alph trying to ignore how uncomfortable his arm was getting. "Do you think they'll win?"

Kirby simply hummed a yes, not looking away from the fight.

A Hand briefly spun out of the cloud before flying back in, clenched into a fist. "The Dark Matter things were really weak before. How's it-"

" _Bad_ dream magic." They lost altitude when Kirby spoke, the puffball having to inhale sharply to stop them from falling again.

"...Oh."

"Mm-hm." Kirby wisely decided to answer with his mouth closed this time, lest they end up in free fall.

"It can use magic."

"Mm-hm."

"And we took it to straight to the source of dreams."

"… Mm-hm."

"Oh, dear."

Fire burst through the cloud, blasting it to pieces. Something huge, black and vaguely humanoid floated there, surrounded by spinning orange orbs- It dwarfed the single Hand floating in front of it.

Alph squinted, trying to spot the other one.

…

…

 _Oh, no._

The second Hand was being worn by the Dark Matter like a glove.

The clouds drew back together, obscuring the battle once more.

It didn't last long. With one final flash of power the air fell quiet as the battle just… Ended, all of a sudden.

The abrupt absence of noise felt strange, and maybe even foreboding, but Alph sighed in relief- _'_ _That could only mean the Hand_ _s_ _had won_ _'_ , he told himself. They would fix things and he could head back to the Drake for a nice cold glass of fruit juice, and forget anything ever happened.

Unfortunately, fate had other, less kind ideas.

The cloud warped. Going from a shapeless mass, it twisted in and out unto itself, shuddering and pulsing and twitching as a rising _noise_ started to emanate from it and everywhere else at once- A cosmic wail that rattled through Alph's skull and lungs and rang over itself in his ears.

Kirby's grip tightened painfully.

The cloud finally shuddered into the shape of an unnatural two-thumbed hand, and then dropped towards them like a brick.

Kirby lost his breath with a scream of terror, and they fell too.

The wailing grew louder until it was all they could hear. The cloud was fast, unnaturally so, the gap closing in an instant and Alph saw the fingers stretch bonelessly open above him, already surrounding them on all sides- Snapping shut within seconds with no chance to even react- Turning the world black with a bone-crushing impact that knocked the air right out of his body, sent him spinning wildly into the unyielding darkness, buffeted this way and that and then, with one final concussive blow...

Nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

Alph dreamt.

He dreamt of falling through endless space, of stars swiveling like eyeballs to follow him down, nebulae and nova pulsing with deep red light as he hurtled through the abyss- Falling deeper, darker, and faster still until space itself opened it's eye-studded maw and swallowed him up completely.

…

Then, Alph awoke to flashing red light and pitch darkness.

He felt… Heavy. Not just in the tired sense, he could feel something lying over him like a blanket, pinning his limbs, body… Everything. Leaving him stuck on his front with his face pressed against the glass of his helmet. With the little movement he could muster- He was so tired- He found that it was… Kind of crunchy, like snow. Warm, black, snow.

The light kept flashing.

Through heavy eyelids, he searched, halfheartedly, for the source.

His suit's H.U.D, of course.

The light, on closer examination turned out to be a message of some sort, flashing constantly beneath his face. His head felt so _heavy_ he just… Couldn't lift it. His fuzzy brain couldn't remember what 'flashing red message' meant anyway... It was probably fine.

Alph laid there until his face went numb enough for the helmet to actually be comfortable.

The light was joined by incessant beeping, or maybe the beeping had been there all along, it didn't really matter.

There were other sounds too, he realized dimly- A rapid, rattling buzz kept issuing from his life-support in pulses, like someone trying and failing to start a car.

And from somewhere else... Rhythmic crunching... Footsteps?

Footsteps.

Increasingly loud footsteps.

They grew louder and louder until they were practically next to his ears and then something dug through the crunchy stuff and next thing he knew he was being lifted bodily into the air until he hung eye-level with Samus' concerned face.

Wow, being hoisted upright made him really dizzy.

Kirby was there too, looking much more scratched up than usual. Then, maybe he'd always been scratched up, Alph couldn't quite-

Samus said something.

Her voice sounded funny. Muffled. Exceedingly hard to understand.

…

Boy, she'd lifted him really high. If everything in sight wasn't grey or black, he'd have a really good view! Alph verbalized this best he could with his face all squished like a child trying to see something exciting through a window, making Samus' expression go from concerned to downright alarmed.

Maybe she didn't like carrying people?

Samus flipped him over and started fiddling with his spluttering life-support.

"H-Hey… Hold on, that's- That's delicate..."

The life-support coughed, chugged, and finally settled into the faint humming sound it's _supposed_ to make.

Then, Samus slung Alph under her arm like a doll, stooped down to grab his half-buried bat, and set off.

–

"Stars above, I almost died."

The flashing red light, on reflection, turned out to be a series of error messages- Ranging from the relatively tame 'radio connection lost' to the concerning 'air intakes blocked' then finally to the infinitely more worrying 'atmospheric failure'.

It said a lot about Alph's day so far that almost suffocating to death on oxygen wasn't nearly the worst thing that had happened.

Properly awake and lucid now, though still slung under Samus' arm, he finally got a good look at their surroundings.

Ash.

As far as the eye could see, the world was buried in a thick layer of ash so deep Alph reckoned it would come to his neck if he tried to stand in it. It rained gently from above like snow, crunching deeply underfoot as Samus trudged forwards.

Not that the eye could see very far at all, the sky was choked by huge black clouds, spanning from horizon to horizon and beyond- Blotting out the sun and the sky until the land was dark and drab as night.

It was a less than encouraging sight.

Samus seemed to know where she was going, somehow. Alph glanced up at her to ask how, but found himself asking a different question instead.

"What happened to your power suit?"

Apart from Kirby, who clung to her hair like a hat, her head was bare and helmet-less. The waving blue beacon-light making her look as grey as their surroundings.

A chunk of her suit was missing from the shoulder downwards- Leaving her without her Arm Cannon.

...Would it be rude, he wondered, to ask her to swap arms? At that point he felt more like he'd been slung to dry over a metal clothes rack rather than picked up and carried.

"I tried to shoot at it." Her answer was brisk, businesslike.

"It?"

"The cloud."

"Oh! Oh… Right."

Alph concluded that yes, it would be rude to ask her to swap arms- And an uncomfortable silence fell.

...

In classic fashion it was broken seconds later by Kirby.

"Oh! Ooooh! Look! Over there!" He leapt off Samus' head and onto her shoulder, jumping, tugging, pointing madly until she turned completely and Alph caught a glimpse of… A slightly less grey smudge, moving towards them at such speed it was kicking up clouds of ash in it's wake.

He didn't even have the chance to consider the very real possibility of this being some sort of attack before the slightly less grey smudge was upon them in a wave of ash, flashing a cocky grin that really didn't belong on someone who'd last been seen flying violently into space.

"Sonic!"

"Hey guys, what'd I miss?" Under the gentle rain of ash, he'd turned the colour of old denim.

"You're okay!" Kirby launched himself off Samus' shoulder and landed squarely on Sonic's head, jumping up and down in joy and making the hedgehog wince.

"Pfft, of course I am! It'll take more than a little flight to get me down." He grabbed Kirby before the puffball could cause a concussion and set him squarely on the ground.

Unlike everyone else, Kirby was too light to sink- Putting him at Sonic's shoulder.

"And look what I got." From… Well, somewhere, Sonic produced a gleaming golden star.

It cut through the gloom like a torch, reflecting off the ash like snow and turning the air around them the crisp, honey-gold colour of sunrise. While it certainly wasn't cold out there, standing, or rather dangling under someone's arm near the star felt a little like standing in gentle sunshine.

"You got the rod!" Kirby's cheer _intensified_.

Alph felt Samus relax slightly "Fantastic, where's the rest?"

"Ah… Well, actually, this is... Kinda all I got."

With one hand, Samus slowly reached up and started to massage the bridge of her nose "… Of course."

"Aw, that's okay!" Kirby held his paws out "Can I have it?"

Sonic shrugged, "Sure." And dropped the star into his awaiting nubs.

The glow increased until it became painful to look at.

Kirby hummed thoughtfully, danced in a circle on the spot, jumped up and down and balanced on one foot, holding the star as high in the air as he could.

"There's more… That way!" Kirby pointed proudly in the direction they were already going- Then, without skipping a beat, sprinted away.

…

Sonic took off after him, showering Alph and Samus with a wave of ash.

After shaking herself off and cursing his name a little, Samus jogged after them, following in Sonic's trail so she didn't have to trudge through knee-high ash.

It wasn't long before the land started sloping.

Gently at first, but steeper and steeper until they were practically climbing a cliff, so steep, in fact, that the ash simply slipped down and accumulated into piles at the bottom.

Both Kirby and Sonic waited at the top, the latter of whom Samus actually tossed Alph to so she could crest the top with both hands.

Coincidentally, Alph finally got tired of being carried around like a stuffed doll at that exact same moment. "Please, put me down!"

With everybody finally up on solid ground, they took a moment to look over the side of the ridge, and found themselves staring over an enormous crater.

Unlike most enormous craters, it wasn't featureless. Burnt corpses of trees, once upon a time making up a vast forest, littered the ground- Pointing sharply away from the center of the crater at impossibly steep angles, their crispy, burnt trunks and branches carrying layers of ash.

Beyond that, so large and wide and horrendously deep they couldn't see the other side through the all-encompassing fog, right in the middle of the crater, sat a hole.

A hole in the shape of a hand.

Cracks the size of canyons emanated from it, running between the fingers and out into the burnt forest, splitting it into chunks.

The remains of broken buildings littered any and every empty patch of ground.

"Wow..."

–

"So, Kirby, which way now?"

"Hmm..." Kirby lifted the star again, swaying in a way that would be worrying if the decent into the crater was anything but a gentle incline. "It's really, really close! It's… Up there!" He pointed… Straight upwards.

"What, in the clou-" "SHHH!" Samus raised her hand, finger to her lips "Can you hear that?" She hissed, pointing to the sky.

They listened.

…

With everyone silent, Alph took the chance to crank up the sensitivity of his suit's outside microphones.

…

…

..!

He heard it.

An engine.

Then, a voice cut through the clouds like a knife- Deep and harsh and _loud_.

" **Bwahaha! Well, well, well, would you look what we have here?"**

* * *

 _ **(Hi!**_

 ** _Thank-you for reading this thing! I never actually expected anyone to do that :0_**

 ** _Annnyyyywwway, I'm sure somebody, somewhere, has noticed I've been updating this baby every week- Which is cool and all, but with the holidays over I ain't gonna be able to throw myself into writing as wholeheartedly as before. That, and I'm coming to the end of the buffer of fic I wrote before I decided to put this thing online (Especially since I mushed two chapters together for the last one because no moderation, rip)_**

 ** _Soooo, as a very slow writer who keeps changing their mind over important plot points, this thing is gonna start updating pretty unevenly from now on, sorry! X0_**

 ** _..._**

 ** _So, uh... Pinky, out!)_**


	5. Chapter 5

Craning his neck, Alph watched the Koopa Clown Car putter down from the clouds and into clear view, King Bowser himself leaning over the rim of the vehicle- Lips pulled back and sharp teeth bared in something he'd claim to be a 'smile'.

The ash around the group started to shift and stir on cue- Goombas and koopa troopers digging themselves out like moles, surrounding them in a wide semicircle and leaving them pinned against the steep drop of the crater's edge.

As Bowser flew down level with them, floating just out of reach over the cliff they'd just climbed, Kirby dropped into a fighting stance- Feet apart, fists raised- A movement Alph caught in the corner of his eye and copied.

Samus spoke first, arms crossed with a scowl written across her face, "What do you want, Bowser?"

The king koopa laughed "Oh Samus, you're no princess, but that look…" It was hard to tell if his sigh was genuine or some kind of mockery, "It ruins your pretty face."

"What do you _want,_ Bowser?"

"Only one small thing..." He levelled his finger at Kirby, or more accurately, the golden star clutched tightly in his paw "That shiny little star!"

"No!"

"You can't have it!"

Samus put a hand up to quiet any arguments " _Why_ do you want it?"

"Because I _said_ so." Bowser narrowed his eyes, voice dropping menacingly " **Now, hand it over.** "

"No." She spun and kicked a goomba that was trying to sneak up on her like a big brown football, sending it barreling downhill into six or so others and taking them screaming along for the ride as they all disappeared into the gloom.

All hell broke loose.

Alph found himself scrambling to dodge grabbing hands and gnashing teeth, all while smacking anything in reach with as much force as he could muster.

In essence, it was exactly the same as every other fight he'd been in.

A koopa lunged at him- Forcing him to roll out of the way, tweeting his whistle out of habit, and smack it with a shell-cracking thwack from behind that sent it spinning wildly away, knocking over anything and everything in it's path.

Nearby, Kirby inhaled a wide swath of enemies and spat the shells rapid-fire at Bowser- Making him swerve and wobble madly in the air as he tried, and failed, to avoid them.

"Hey! Repairs don't come cheap, you know!"

"Oh! I'm sorry," Sonic caught on and started kicking shells at the Clown Car, each one cracking ear-splittingly as they broke the sound barrier "Is this _breaking_ it?"

"Aggh! Stop that!"

–

"Do you have any idea how hard it was to scrape those minions together?" Bowser roared, as the last goomba found himself unceremoniously punted off the cliff.

"I imagine it was pretty-"

"Shut up! That was rhetorical!" He dragged one hand down his snout in annoyance, then… Paused- Eyeing the group, taking them in in all their beaten-up glory.

Alph saw his eyes linger just a little longer on him, focusing somehow more on his helmet than face. Then, Bowser's mouth twisted back into that terrifying, predatory smile. "Well, anyway... They don't really matter when I have **this**!"

He thrust his arm up high above his head, and black goo began to run up between his scales like water. It dripped from his claws into a gravity-defying ball above his palm, growing larger and larger until it was almost the size of his head.

A slit opened up in the middle, a bulging eye almost popping straight out as it twisted, twitching, to _stare…_ At Bowser's other hand.

He rose that above his head too, and there, clutched between two claws, something glittered.

Banded red and white like a candy cane and glowing softly in the half-light- There was no mistaking it, a chunk of the Star Rod!

Bowser brought the chunk closer and closer to the blob, watching in satisfaction as it writhed, throwing out little tendrils to grab and wrap the chunk tighter and tighter until it managed to yank it right out of the koopa's grip and absorb it deep into it's body.

The blob's twitching grew faster.

Then, it started to grow in pulses- Faster and faster, tendrils flailing, it dropped out of the air and started to spill over the edges of Bowser's hand, it's slimy skin bubbling as it increased in size; Making foul foam drip down Bowser's arm.

For a few seconds, his smile dropped, replaced instead with a look of utter disgust. Then, it affixed itself like it had never left and Bowser threw the blob like a ball, chuckling lowly as it narrowly missed Samus' head.

As formless arms started to sprout from the thing, the Koopa Clown Car rose back up into the clouds, Bowser's laughter echoing into the distance as he made his exit. "I'll be back for your trophies... If there are any! Bwahahaha!"

The blob rose up out of the ash. It's bottom half coated in a pale, flaking layer of the stuff that clung to it's body like scales. Twisting in the air like a snake, an assortment of limbs rose and fell at random as it's shape solidified into something long and thick and _ugly._

In the centre of it's eye, the piece of rod glowed like a torch- Illuminating the thing's iris a violently neon shade of orange.

Eventually, it stopped moving, and just hung motionless in the air- Coiled tightly like some great big snake.

…

…

The 'snake' spun towards Kirby so fast it became nothing more than a blur and _lunged_.

Arms, too many arms, grabbed and punched and pummeled the puffball from all angles, driving him into the ground with a muffled scream and a cloud of ash.

" _Hey!"_

Sonic smacked into the thing's 'head' feet-first at mach speed, sending it bouncing away, arms flailing, body twisting and Kirby flying spectacularly high as the impact flung him free.

Samus had her pistol out before it even finished rolling from the recoil, peppering it with shots that lit the air yellow and left little glowing craters in it's flanks.

As Kirby plummeted back to earth Alph briefly abandoned all common sense and ran to catch him. Kirby wasn't hard or heavy but compared to Alph he was _big_ , and the impact sent them both crashing to the ground.

Kirby rolled back onto his feet with a groan, "Thanks..."

Alph did the same. "Oof, no proble- Ack!" He threw his hands in front of his face as the snake rounded on them, it's blazing eye blinding him like a floodlight.

It shook off Sonic and Samus' attacks as if they were nothing more than annoyances and dived, once again, for Kirby.

The puffball jumped, prepared now, sailing easily over the thing while Alph rolled out of the way, head-over-heels. He landed on both feet and spun to find it stuck head-first in the ground behind him. Taking the chance, he gripped his bat so hard his gloves creaked loudly against the wood, and swung.

The impact was… Solid. Unlike the other Dark Matter things he'd faced, the snake had hardly any give. It was made of something different, something soft but not gross and goopy… Something distinctly... Fleshy.

No matter what it was, _it wasn't made of goo._

And if it wasn't made of goo then… That meant-

Alph snapped out of his thoughts as the snake wrenched itself from the ground and batted him out of it's way with a hand the size of his head as, honestly, his hit was about as deadly as a mosquito bite- Undulating past through the air like some bizarre fish, still dead-set on Kirby.

Strangely, the impact didn't even leave a mark.

Of course, at this point Alph's white and blue suit was absolutely filthy, but a hit like that _should_ have left him splattered with gunk.

The astronaut pulled himself to his feet as Kirby ran past him. The puffball was doing a fantastic job dodging, but he was visibly tiring, and no blunt hit or shot seemed to stop, hurt or even slow the monster down.

No _blunt_ hit.

Brain cogs whirred, and an idea formed.

The monster sped narrowly overhead as Kirby ran the other way, forcing Alph to shout over his screaming. "Sonic!"

"Yeah?" The hedgehog appeared out of nowhere and skidded to a stop next to him, already fidgeting as the fight went on without him.

"I think- You need to do that, that, um," Of _course_ he didn't know the word for it "-That spinny thing!"

"… A Spin Dash? No offence, but I'd rather keep my eye count at a healthy _two_." He held up two fingers, as if words alone didn't get the point across.

"N-No! Trust me, I think this will work!"

"You _think_ it will work?" Sonic asked, before that grin settled back on his face, "Eh, well, I guess that's been good enough for me before." He disappeared before Alph could explain exactly _why_ it would work, leaving nothing but a gust of wind and a trail of disturbed ash.

Samus' shots rang out behind him and Alph whipped around just in time to see a blue streak tear the thing violently in two with a noise like a buzzsaw and an immense shower of… Liquid. Thin, dark liquid that stained the ground where it fell a magnificent shade of purple, reminiscent of fruit juice.

It dropped out of the air, the long body flopping and writhing fruitlessly on the floor, throwing clouds of dust and ash into the air with each movement, which grew weaker and weaker until it stopped moving at all.

The head took longer, the many limbs grouped around the eye grasping, grabbing and groping, dragging itself across the ground towards it's puffy pink goal before the flashlight eye flickered out and it, too, stopped moving at all.

Then, nothing.

It didn't melt, or ooze away to fight again, or reform into something else or turn into a puddle.

It was dead.

It's eye, now blank and glassy, started to wobble up and down in its socket until the rod piece ripped itself free with a gristly pop and one final cascade of liquid- Settling in the air just a few feet above, spinning slowly and glittering gently.

…

Kirby grabbed it.

With the action finished, Alph couldn't help but flop to the ground. "I'm so glad that's over-" Loud orchestral music started to swell from nowhere and everywhere at once and Kirby started to dance enthusiastically next to the corpse of the monster.

"What."

It was a hard dance to follow. Kirby spun on his toes, did some flips, a bit of moonwalking and, when he started breakdancing, Sonic joined in too- Looking either significantly less ashen or dyed more purple, it was impossible to tell.

At the very least, he wasn't the colour of old jeans any more.

The music faded out, and the dance ended with Kirby wobbling precariously on Sonic's foot and Sonic balancing upside-down, carefully, on one hand.

Kirby kicked off the foot with all the grace of an overexcited beach ball and sent the hedgehog sprawling off balance beneath him, while the puffball himself landed as lightly as ever, holding the star and the rod piece high above his head "We got a piece!"

Together, the star and the chunk floated in the air, and started to glow in unison until they were a blinding white.

Then, the glow cut, the pieces dropped, Kirby span on his toe, shouting "There's more this way!" And ran full-tilt for the leaning forest ahead until he'd almost disappeared downhill into the gloom of the crater.

It was all anyone could do to keep up.

–

The angled trees amassed ash on their burnt branches much like a normal forest would collect snow.

The layer that _did_ make it to the ground was thin, and offered absolutely no resistance to anyone walking through- A small miracle compared to the two-foot-tall piles everywhere else- That turned progress from a slow slog to something as easy as a walk in the park.

Kirby's sprint quickly slowed to a brisk and easier to follow trot. Leading him along, the rod took them on a winding path between the trees, which loomed out of the fog around them as they moved in the form of hulking black shadows.

The only sounds were the crunch of footsteps and the eerie creaking of dead plants struggling to hold their own weight.

That is, until the branches up above started to rattle and shake, their grey layers raining down as a fine powder as a sudden wind swept in, gathering huge clouds of ash as it pushed through the unnaturally still forest.

Ash wasn't the only thing this wind carried.

Sonic's nose wrinkled as a gust whipped against his face, his expression growing quizzical "Can anyone else smell that?"

Samus nodded. "Smoke. Some kind of…" Pause, sniff, "...Electrical fire." She turned mid-stride without another word, walking into the wind with her ponytail whipping behind her like a flag. "This way, come on."

"Wha-" Kirby clambered up her armour and hung off her shoulder in front of her face until he obscured the forest even more than the fog "But we need to go that way!" He waved with the star the way they'd been heading- Down the gentle slope- The point pulsing a gentle gold to mark his point.

Samus lifted him gently off her shoulders and slung him underarm, "Where there's fire, there's people. And where there's people, there's trouble… You don't want to _leave_ anyone that needs our help, do you?"

"But- The star-" After a solid second of silence, Kirby's response turned into a sulky "No, I don't."

"That's what I thought. Come on!"

–

Nestled in a brief break in the trees, a lone Arwing sat half buried in the earth, spewing thick, black smoke. The ship was a broken wreck, totaled in its crash, huge chunks of its frame simply smashed up and missing.

Next to it- Its wide channel standing directly in their way- An enormous canyon ran through the earth, splitting the clearing roughly and unevenly.

Around it, figures bustled. Indistinct in the fog, swords strapped to their backs and bulging, singular eyes dominating the remains of their faces. Ike stood out, his height and bulk impossible to disguise, while the other could have been Marth, Lucina or even Robin.

Neither of them noticed the little group hidden in the trees, the ashen haze their ally for once, as they… Did something.

"What are they _doing_?" Samus hissed, inching as far out of cover as she could afford.

Ike unsheathed his sword and with a single stroke hacked the front half of the craft clean off, sending more smoke billowing out of the brand new hole.

"Attacking it?"

The second one,- Definitely Lucina- Her new eye spilling through the slits of her mask like a tumour, grabbed the newly liberated piece and started to drag it away, following a deep pre-existing rut in the ground.

"...No, Look!" Alph gasped "They're taking it apart."

On closer examination, the damage became more and more clean-cut. Missing and broken chunks sheared away not by impact, but by blades.

A faint musical chime played from somewhere, and the wind changed again- Clearing the view of the ship and bowing away the all-obscuring fog until they could make out the other side of the clearing.

And there, between the trees, stood a beast.

Four-legged, hunched and patterned grey as the world around it, it's eyes bore into them across the clearing- A piercing blue that carried, somehow, past the distance and the ash, the smoke and the fading light, clear as day.

On it's back, one hand clutching the ruff of the creature's neck and seated so low to the ground his toes were almost skimming the rocks, sat… Link.

Not the big Link, the small one. What was his nickname again? Toony?

He held some kind of silver wand aloft like a conductors baton, surprised momentarily into stillness by the group opposite him.

Ike cleaved the wings off the ship in one smooth movement with an almighty crash that spurred the little swordsman back to life- Toony stuck the wand between his teeth and waved enthusiastically across the gap.

Alph waved back along with the rest of the group as Link started to gesture wildly, pointing at himself, his frankly terrifying steed, and then at Ike- Who seemed to be trying to carve out the burning engine as a possessed Marth appeared to take away the wings- And pounded his palm with his fist. Then he pointed at the group, pointed along the crack in the ground where it disappeared up the slope and into the woods, mimed jumping, pointed back at Ike, did the palm-pounding thing again, and nodded.

Samus shook her head and started to mime back, pantomiming for him to _stay put_ while they made their way over.

Toony was having none of it, he reiterated his message, but with wider movements and more force this time.

Samus shook her head as Marth disappeared into the returning fog, mouthing clearly, though not loudly, _"Wait. For. Us."_

Link drew his sword, the fading light shining off it as if he'd taken it out in the middle of the day.

" _Don't!"_

Shrieking and howling a wordless twin war cry, Toony and his steed broke from the treeline, the beasts long legs carrying them over the disturbed ground of the crash effortlessly, closing the gap within seconds. Ike's gaze slid sluggishly from the ship, head moving mechanically as he turned to watch Link's approach. Then, slowly, the possessed swordsman wrenched his blade from the guts of the machine with a screech of metal on metal and stood tall, turning his whole body to face the charging hero with those same robotic movements.

Their swords clashed, and with a sweep of Ike's arm Link found himself thrown to the floor unceremoniously- The impact alone sending up a cloud of ash and dust as he skidded on his back along the ground.

"Link!" Sonic and Kirby made a mad dash out of the cover of the trees, Alph scrambling to keep up behind them- Samus at their heels shouting something angry, already shooting as she ran towards the canyon.

The crack ahead was wide enough to make crossing an impossibility, forcing them to skid to a stop. On the other side, Toony was already up, ducking and rolling, his sword clashing with Ike's brutal strikes and sending sparks skittering across the ground, giving the battle a strobe-light look.

The beast circled the fight, jumping and biting at every opportunity- Narrowly missing a spray of slime as thick lines of the stuff started to stream down Ike's sword.

Link dodged back, out of range, drew his bow and studded Ike's front with arrows before the swordsman even had the chance to move.

The Less-Than-Radiant Hero stumbled back until he hit the remains of the Arwing.

He flopped against it, composure lost for just a moment, then grabbed a protruding chunk of metal to pull himself upright- And he might have even succeeded if the ship hadn't taken that exact moment to explode.

The air filled with smoke and noise. The flames and the shockwave sent Toony and his steed tumbling to the ground, narrowly avoiding jagged shrapnel as it shot over their heads. Alph found himself stumbling back as the air from the blast hit him, peppering him with dirt and rocks and leaving him blinking the afterimage out of his eyes as it subsided as fast as it came, leaving nothing but a billowing mushroom cloud above his head and a faint ringing in his ears.

Standing proudly amidst the remains of the Arwing, Ike's pale, soot-smudged trophy wobbled on its base and fell, face-first, into the dirt.

Link dragged himself to his feet, shaking off the dust as he went, and thrust his sword in the air with a cry of triumph- As, once again, the thin light caught the blade and poured back off it like a mirror. As he sheathed it, a great rumble rolled around the crater from the echo of the explosion.

… And continued to roll long after any reasonable echo should have packed up and finished.

…

The ground started to shake.

The shaking started as a gentle vibration that could easily be caused by the noise alone, but quickly grew more and more violent until Alph found himself thrown off his feet- Thankfully, _away_ from the canyon, as the earth below him started to tear itself to pieces.

Toony found himself hauled backwards by the collar as, with a horrible grinding sound, the ground underneath the destroyed ship collapsed into the rapidly widening canyon- Dragging Ike and a newly arrived Lucina, to whom no one had the chance to react, down with it.

The shaking slowed and stopped but the sound continued, rising above their heads until the sky itself rang with it, the rumbles and cracks of shifting stone changing in pitch and tone, warping until it almost sounded like the drawn out groans, creaks and pangs of shifting ice.

That noise faded out, too, until the only sound was the clatter of settling rocks.

"Wow!"

… And Link's voice, which carried remarkably well over the gap "That was a really powerful explosion!"

Alph dragged himself back to his feet "I don't think the explosion did all that..." He peered up at the sky, listening for any trace of the noise.

Was it just him, or had the twilight filtering through the fog taken on a rather… _Patchy_ quality? As if chunks of the sky had just... Stopped letting it through for some reason, casting wide shadows where, previously, there had been none.

As for the terrifying, all encompassing noise though, he could hear nothing at all.

What he could hear, from deep inside the canyon before him, yet getting louder and closer with every second, was the whirring of an engine.

* * *

 _ **(So that Switch presentation, huh? Looks pretty good, and with all the Zelda hype, this chapter is pretty appropriate.**_

 _ **That, and writing is hard and this chapter is about as good as I can make it at my current skill level, so no point keeping it back. Doesn't help that this website likes to destroy my formatting every time I paste a file :0**_

 _ **Annnyway I have a question (!) to answer! (From an amazing writer too, holy moly play it cool, Pinky) CheesyOne, I half came up with the moving reflection idea myself- When I went and looked up the stage to make sure I described it properly, I found some interesting trivia about the reflections not quiiiite coping your actions properly, like, not blinking and stuff. And I was like :O, bam, grabbed that idea and made it into something cool.**_

 _ **Yeah, so... That's it from me, um, see ya'll next time I manage to successfully spew ideas to paper in some legible fashion.**_

 _ **...**_

 _ **... Pinky, out!)**_


	6. Chapter 6

Bowser rose from the canyon to a chorus of groans.

"Oh, shut up. I told you I was coming back." He patted the Koopa Clown Car, the dents and bumps from the onslaught of shells he faced last time patched up with… Duct tape?

Alph winced. That was _not_ going to hold.

Toony drew his bow, notching an arrow in preparation. "Bowser! What are you doing here?"

"Oh!" The great koopa wheeled around until he was facing the swordsman "Little Link! How did you enjoy the playdate last week?"

"Um?..You _kidnapped_ me and locked me in your castle."

"I know **that**! I asked how you liked it, not for your life story."

"Uh, well," Link slowly lowered his bow, "The pizza was pretty good."

"Fantastic." From inside the Clown Car Bowser whipped out a little book, flipped it open, and produced a pen. "Junior wants you back next Wednesday. Oh, bring your own blindfold- My troops are all out, and it would be a pain to get more just for you."

"Wait- Do I get a choi-"

" **No**." Bowser snapped the book closed and dropped it back out of sight "You're coming. Honestly, I'm doing you a favour, it's healthy to play with kids your own age!"

As Link started to complain, Bowser waved him off and spun the Car around again. "Now, where was I?" The glittery treasure in Kirby's paws caught his eye and he grinned maliciously, "Ah, _yes_! I've brought a brand new- Hm..." The koopa trailed off and levelled a clawed finger at Alph, making him step back nervously. "You. Blue… Space Guy. How old are you?"

"E-Er..." Alph stuttered, the unexpected question leaving him completely thrown off. "I'm-"

"-Actually, I don't care. You're invited too. Try to find a sack that'll fit over that stupid helmet." With that little diversion out of the way, he cleared his throat, and got back to business. " _Anyway_ , hand over the Star Rod... _Bits_. Ugh, honestly, that's a real mouthful. I'm just gonna call them Star Chunks from now on, okay? I don't have time for names with more than two words in 'em... Now, _**gimme.**_ "

Immediately, Kirby shoved both pieces into his mouth as if they were nothing more than candy. "No!"

Bowser laughed, "Eating them won't help you! I'll just cut them right out of your trophy once **this** is done with you!" On cue, the Koopa Clown Car rose higher into the air, and from the darkness of the canyon came …

…

…

Absolutely nothing.

"Hey, what?" Bowser raised his voice and lent over the side of the car to until he was almost falling out of it. "I said, **once** _ **this**_ **is done with you!** "

Nothing happened.

Nothing continued to happen.

Bowser shouted some more into the darkness and succeeded in making, you guessed it, nothing happen.

Nothing went on to win an Oscar for its fantastic role in Nothing: The Movie.

Nothing proceeded to star in a series of critically-acclaimed sequels and write a well-received novel entitled; 'Nothing Came out of the Canyon (No Matter How Much Bowser Screamed)'.

"Stupid half-rate no good monsters can't even follow a _single_ \- Gah, fine, whatever!" With an angry cloud of smoke billowing from his nostrils, the Koopa King jabbed a claw at the assembled people below, his other hand reaching over to re-stick a piece of tape that was already peeling. "Grrr, you- You're lucky I don't have time to fight you myself! Consider this your chance to surrender- You have until I get that **thing** moving. _Think carefully._ " With that, Bowser dropped into the deep darkness of the canyon, the echo of his voice and the whirr of the Clown Car's engine fading into oblivion.

Toony lent dangerously over the edge to watch him go. "That was... _Super_ weird. What's he- Wah- Hey!" His voice turned into a squeak as his steed grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him back from the drop, "Come _on_ , I'm not gonna fall!" It snorted and rolled its eyes, then, with a quiet whine, clawed at its neck with one paw. "Huh? What're you- Ohh! Right!"

Toony reached forwards and grabbed some kind of leather cord from around the beast's neck. With a bit of effort, for even sitting, it was taller than him, he pulled it over its head, flattening its ears forwards and briefly squashing its fuzzy face in a comical fashion. Once the cord was off, he held it as far away from his body as he could manage- A large, dark crystal swinging from the end.

The crystal was, frankly, plain uncomfortable to look at. It's very form defied the gaze- Staying just out of focus in a way that strained the eyes.

… And then the growing shadows on the ground twisted into the upright and wrapped around the beast like reams of fabric, rendering it so black and featureless it became unto a hole in the air itself- Rendering the crystal positively mundane.

With a faint scraping sound, the shadows started to move like a liquid- Lifting the creature off its front paws, elongating its back legs and body, changing shapes, rearranging, then melting away altogether, leaving… Link?

Not the little Link, who stood proudly like this was the most natural occurrence in the world, the big Link.

 _Well._

"Oh." Samus murmured, slightly less freaked out then she should be, "Link's a werewolf."

–

"- And ever since then, when I touch this crystal, I've been able to turn back into a wolf."

The Links lead them along the canyon to a spot they had used to cross over earlier, where a tree had fallen across the crack- Apparently making a decent bridge.

… A good plan, assuming the earthquake hadn't destroyed it, of course.

As they walked, Link told- Well, shouted- His story over the gap, with Toony adding his own… Embellishments.

"-I almost got run through by a moblin, but it was worth it for all the rupees it had."

"Come on, that's not cool enough! Obviously, it stabbed you _right_ through," Toony drew his sword and made a violent motion, "But then, you went and killed three more!"

"Heh," Link puffed out his chest, " _Maybe_ that happened, but I don't like to brag- Unlike a certain kid."

"What? No, you're just _jealous_ 'cause all your stories are boring."

Link pulled a face of mock outrage "Me? Jealous? _Never._ " He cleared his throat, "Anyway, you get the idea. I'll explain the rest when we have more time."

"Yeah, no more stories, I have a question." Toony jabbed his sword at the group,"Why's Bowser after you? And why was he going on about Star Rods?"

Well," Samus started to explain, "Bowser's working with our adversary-"

"-Dark Matter!"

" _Yes_ , thank you, Kirby, Dark Matter. It broke the real Star Rod, not the tournament item, into bits. If we collect them all, we _should_ get a sizeable advantage. Although, so far, Bowser's been using them to create full-blown monsters- So it's imperative we don't let any more fall into his hands."

"That was Bowser, huh?" Link mused, "That explains a lot."

"What do you mean?"

Toony's hand shot into the air "Oh! Let me tell this one!"

Link shrugged, "Sure."

"Yesss! Okay, so before we ran into you guys, we were with… Um, Rosalina, Jigglypuff, Doctor Mario and, um… You know the big, orange dragon Pokémon?"

"Charizard."

"Yeah, that guy. And we're just walking 'cause we don't know what's going on, and then Luma runs off and comes back with this little red and white glittery thing, and Rosalina's like: 'This is really important, we need to hold onto this'. So we keep walking, and then this _giant scorpion_ comes out of nowhere and attacks us! So we're fighting it, and we're winning, but then it stings Rosalina hard enough to make her grow a new eye. And then Luma exploded on Jigglypuff. And also Doctor Mario. And they went totally crazy! So, er, we were outnumbered and they totally had us on the ropes… So we had to run."

…

"And then we ran around for a while before spotting that smoke and running into you guys."

–

While most of the trees in the area were still, for a _very_ loose definition of the word, standing- The ones clinging to the edges of the canyon had been shaken and shifted with such force their roots had been torn from the broken ground itself, forcing anyone passing through to clamber over fallen trunks and push through tangles of burnt branches like an adventurer in the bush.

Kirby leant over the side of a particularly thick oak, his shifting paws sending rivets of ash down the curve of the trunk. "You want me to fly you up?"

"No, thank you, I can do it." Alph replied, stepping back, eyes scanning the trunk for a good handhold- Before reaching and grabbing a suitably thick, protruding branch. He pulled himself up, braced his feet firmly against the bark, and reached for the next one. "I just need to-"

The burnt branch snapped and with a muffled thump, his feet reunited with the ground.

"Oh, well," He shuffled along the trunk, taking hold of another branch and hoisting himself up. "I can just-"

Snap.

"Maybe-"

 _Snap._

"If I just grab-"

 _ **Snap.**_

No more branches. "… This tree doesn't like me."

Kirby pulled a pitying kind of face, and stepped back, searching up and down the tree for something. "Hmm… Oh!" He sprinted over to the remains of the crown of the tree, and, with a bit of heaving, broke a large chunk of wood right off. "I know what to do! Watch this, it's gonna be awesome."

Kirby tossed the wood high into the air, and inhaled it.

In the air around them, bright points of light formed- Glowing electric green, they shone for just a moment before the light dimmed as they started to spin- Changing shape until Kirby was surrounded by a swirling flurry of shockingly green leaves.

Once again, a circlet of soft twigs grew from the puffball's head, decorated this time not with leaves, but with a shock of pale pink blossom.

"Wow," Alph clapped politely, "Excellent, but how-"

"-Whoa whoa, wait! I haven't done it yet!" Kirby held his arms in front of him, face scrunched in concentration, then he thrust them in the air with such force he actually stumbled backwards _"Ya!"_

At the same time, the ground at Alph's feet exploded outwards.

The astronaut took a series of hurried steps back as a small _tree_ emerged, creaking and groaning, growing at high speed until it reached the height of the log- Branches sprouting from the trunk in two rows, alternating on each side until it formed... "A ladder!"

Kirby reached out and pulled a leaf from the topmost branch, "Wow, it actually worked. I mean, of course! Come on up!"

The branches flexed gently under his weight, the tree lent at just the right angle as he reached the top- And, with a short hop, Alph set foot on the log.

"That _was_ awesome." He made his way to the other side of the fallen tree, only to find nothing but the sound of voices receding through the mist. "Thanks for… Hey, where has everybody gone?"

Kirby ran to his side, "Oh, I told 'em we'd catch up." His smile grew wide, voice jumping to a squeak with excitement "And! I know how, too!"

The puffball slammed his paws against the wood, kicking up specks of grey with the impact, and from his palms, _vines_ sprouted. Thick, twisting, and a deep shade of brown- They grew at a ridiculous rate, spinning themselves together and flinging themselves through the air to the next fallen tree, wrapping it in a twisting embrace and continuing on to the next. The vines expanded massively, growing until they formed a serviceable bridge, flat on top and wide enough for two people to walk across side-by-side, a structurally sound curve between the two logs, with a bushy border of deep green leaves.

...Which was all very nice, but what _really_ caught Alph's attention were the fat bunches of berries hanging beneath the vines- "Fruit!"

His stomach gurgled slightly as he lent over to inspect the closest bunch. Stars, it must have been… At least _two hours_ since he'd last eaten! With starvation imminent, he reached to pluck a bundle off the branch, only for Kirby to grab his outstretched hand and drag him onto the bridge, leaving the succulent, juicy fruit in their wake.

Kirby didn't stop, either. Opting to drag Alph behind him along the vines. The berries were gone, but the fact that Kirby could _grow fruit,_ straight out of the _ground_ , after eating a _stick_ , was much more interesting.

Time to ask subtle questions. "Why are we running?"

"Because running is fun!" Kirby released his hand, "You can walk if you really wanna."

"No, no, I'm fine." He sped up slightly to jog side-by-side "Hey, the fruit growing on these vines, is it edible?"

"Of course it's eatable!" Kirby said, eating two bunches at once and somehow pressing a third into Alph's hands. Up close, they looked like tiny Dusk Pustules. "But you gotta eat them quickly, they'll disappear when I lose the ability."

Oh. "Oh."

"I _know_ , right?" Kirby went on, oblivious to the true depths of his disappointment, "Someday, I'll figure out how to stop that, and then... I'll grow the _best garden in the world!_ Fruit the size of your head! Fruit the size of **my** head!"

"But you're all head?"

" **Exactly!** "

–

Like all good things, the vine bridge quickly came to an end- The thick branches diving directly into the ground, the last few meters becoming a short, steep slide that unceremoniously deposited the two at their destination.

Ahead of them, Samus and Sonic stood at the edge of canyon. Samus barely glanced over her shoulder at their arrival, while Sonic raised a hand in greeting. On the other side, an enormous, double-trunked tree reached just halfway across the gap, its skinny branches grasping at the edge like burnt fingers, with Link and Toony both perching precariously at the end.

Kirby hopped over, and Alph followed- Eyeing the tree with a sense of uncertainty that only grew as he watched the branches bend and bounce with every movement "That looks… Dangerous."

"There's been a change of plan." Samus said, "They're coming over to join us, instead of- Hang on." She interrupted herself, "-Toony, climb to that branch above your head, you don't have enough height down there." As he obeyed, scrambling upwards in a way that only made the bouncing worse, she continued her sentence like nothing happened. "-Instead of the other way around. The tree that was bridging this thing must have fallen in during the earthquake."

"No kidding." Kirby muttered, watching the motion of the tree with a look of trepidation. "You know, I could grow some vines across to _make_ a bridge for us."

Samus sighed, "Normally, I'd agree. But Toony really, _really_ wants to show off his 'Deku Leaf'... Whatever that is."

"Since when has something like that stopped you?"

"I can't stop him jumping from over here, can I? And I'd rather he tried it from there than, say, the actual edge the crack."

"Can't argue with that, I guess." Kirby shrugged.

"Can't Link take charge over there, or something?" Alph asked.

"Are you kidding me? They're just as bad as each other."

"Wha- Hey!" Link shouted across the gap "I can hear you, you know. This is totally safe!"

"Yeah!" Toony yelled, brandishing a giant leaf "Watch this!"

He took a few steps back, the branch under his feet wobbling madly, and sprinted forwards, using the movement to bounce high into the air with a running leap. He barely had time to fall before the giant leaf caught the air and expanded immensely over his head like a glider, trailing little green sparkles as he sailed gently across the gap to land easily on the other side to a smattering of applause.

"Mmm, thank you, thank you." He bowed, before turning back to Link, waving the leaf in the air "Alright! How do I get this back to you?"

"Just hold it over your head!" The elder Hylian shouted back, producing something from his belt that rattled loudly like a metal chain. "I'll clawshot it over."

He slipped his hand into this device and aimed it with one eye closed, revealing it to be one of his go-to weapons during matches, a strange looking grappling hook which came equipped with vicious claws. Vaguely remembering being grabbed by the thing during matches, Alph took a few quick steps away from Toony.

You know, for safety.

The little hero himself held the leaf two-handed, as high above his head as he could manage- Even resorting to standing on tip-toe. "How's this?"

"Yeah, that's good. Just hold it..." With a loud zipline whizz overlain with the faint chatter of metal, the clawshot barely missed Toony's head as the sharp prongs snatched the leaf out of his grip and straight into Link's waiting hand.

"Awesome. Okay," He reattached the clawshot to his belt and climbed higher. "I'm coming over."

Just as Link was about to jump, Toony gasped and started to shout, "Wait! Wait a second!"

The hero very almost toppled right out of the tree "What? What is it?"

"You're too heavy!"

"'Too heavy'?- I'm _not_ 'too heavy!'"

"Yeah, you are! You need the wind behind you. One sec," From a pocket, he produced that strange silver wand from earlier. "I'll call some up."

This time, when Toony waved the wand like a conductor, it didn't just whistle like it did from far away, no, this time it _sang_.

Coloured sparkles spilled from the end as it produced a beautiful choir-like sound. Singing in some strange harmony, the tone, pitch and rhythm all changing as he moved until the wind stirred up around them with a musical trill, artificially shifting the still air until it blew in over the canyon.

" _Now_ can I go?" Link called over the sound of the wind.

"Yeah, you're good!" Toony shouted back.

Link jumped.

The wind caught his leaf like a sail, propelling him forwards twice as fast as Toony… Which didn't really help as he dropped like a rock, the leaf doing very little to slow his fall at all.

He really _was_ too heavy.

Link hit the side of the canyon with a painful thump, the loose rock breaking away under his fingers and sending him plummeting down until he finally got a grip on the crumbling wall, just in sight of the top.

"I'm okay!" He called upwards, rather sheepishly. "Although, um… I dropped the leaf."

Toony facepalmed. "'Course you did."

Kirby, the only one light enough to risk leaning over the edge, leant over the edge. "Do you want me to drop a vine down to you or something?"

"No, thanks! I can climb."

"Alright then!" Kirby turned around to address anyone listening. "He's okay."

Samus sighed quietly, "We should've built a bridge."

–

Link crested the edge with a grunt of effort, pulling himself up until he had his elbows firmly on the earth, legs still dangling into the abyss. "Hey."

"Yo." Sonic gave him a little wave, while Kirby opted to be just a little more enthusiastic. "Hii!"

Alph opened his mouth to ask if Link was injured, but Toony got in before him. "I can't believe you _dropped_ my Deku Leaf."

"Yeah, sorry about that… I promise, I'll get you a new one."

"… How? That was the only one."

"I'll find a way. Most of the time I just _wave my arm_ ," He did just that, adjusting his other elbow to keep him on solid ground. "And whatever I need just **appears** \- Oh, wow okay." Quick as a flash, the leaf was gently slipped into his palm as he gestured. "That... Works too!"

"Okay, that was kind of weird." Sonic said, "Where'd it come from?"

"Dunno," Link put the leaf down and lent back as far as he could to peer into the darkness below, even though, admittedly, it wasn't much lighter at the top. "I can't see anything down there, 'guess the wind picked it up." He shrugged, stopping suddenly with his shoulders still up, wide-eyed, as a horrible crash, like the entire canyon wall coming down, came surging up from the void beneath.

The noise only petered out for a few seconds, before coming again, this time louder, closer.

Like footsteps.

Toony swallowed as the pebbles at his feet started to rattle. "You should get out of the canyon."

Link nodded, echoing his agreement. "I should get out of the canyon."

–

Link did not get out of the canyon.

Not even close.

The noise moved far faster than anyone could hope to scramble over the lip of the canyon, and to cries of absolute horror from everyone gathered, something large, sharp and dark slid though Link's chest like a knife though butter as he desperately tried to haul himself out of the way, the source of the falling rocks making its appearance as an enormous gelatinous _leg_ shot out the darkness of the canyon.

It waved and shuddered, unconstrained by measly things such as bones, the end decorated not by a foot, but by an enormous sword-like spike- At least the height of Bowser himself- Which it sunk deeply into the crumbling ground.

Seven more legs followed it, each stabbing into the earth with enough force to shake chunks off the sides of the canyon, sending them crashing into the abyss- Dragging poor Link along for the ride as he limply slid down the spike on impact, coming to rest face-first on the ashen ground.

With the limbs firmly rooted, four on one side, four on the other, the body rose from the pit.

The monster looked like a cross between a crab and a spider, round and thickly armoured on all sides. Where any sensible crab or spider would have a head, it had nothing but smooth, featureless plates.

Speaking of Bowser, his patched-up Clown Car rose alongside it with a distinctive putter.

It stood so tall, the fog shrouded its body like a blanket, dark form blending with the sky as the light finally gave way and a cheery jingle played faintly in Alph's ears to signal the end of the day.

On the underside where the legs met with the body, a slit formed between two plates of armour, and, from inside, the creature's eye peeled slowly open- Shining down like a blinding orange spotlight, illuminating every mote of dust and ash in the air as it cut through the gloom and cast a bright circle onto the floor below.

Kirby's expression slid from terror to hard determination. "It's got a piece of the Rod!"

"Pfft, big deal," Sonic scoffed, barely hiding the tremor in his voice and bending to touch his toes as he spoke. "We've already beaten one, what's another?"

"Ha!" Bowser crowed, now invisible in the dark and the clouds but still audible "We'll see how long that optimism lasts! Especially when I have _this_!"

…

"Have _what_?" Samus demanded, "We can't see you!"

"You can't see?- Ah, I mean, of _course_ you can't! I have such superior eyesight I didn't realize, one second." A series of lights flicked on inside the Car, lighting him harshly from below.

Not _just_ him, however.

Bowser had a trophy squashed uncomfortably next to him, stony features obscured by his arm, which he wrestled out of the Car and waved above his head.

"Can you see it now?" He called.

It was Greninja. A gentle Pokemon that liked to provide the pikmin with little showers of water.

… Usually in great volumes and without warning, but a sweet gesture nonetheless.

When he was sure they could all see, the Koopa King tossed the trophy unceremoniously onto the monster's back, where it stuck for just a moment before sinking in, Greninja disappearing head first into the mass of armour with barely a ripple.

With its new acquisition, a strange shiver of light flashed through the monster's body- Making every limb twitch.

"Good luck!" Bowser cackled, "You'll be needing it this time!"

The lights cut out, and the sound of his engine faded away into the night- Replaced by the grinding hiss of enormous blades unsheathing from the fractured ground as the monster stirred, and slowly started to move.

Its eye darted between targets, turning everyone muted shades of grey under the florescent orange light, eventually settling, of course, on Kirby.

It lifted a leg, and drove it into the ground, narrowly missing the puffball as he darted out of the way.

With the spike out of his back, Link briefly lit the cliffside gold as he turned into a trophy.

Another limb came down, forcing Kirby to swerve out of the way "Why are you all just _standing_ _there!?"_ He shrieked, desperately dodging impalement.

"Oh! Sorry!" Alph squeaked, swinging his bat at the nearest leg and missing as it lifted to swat at Kirby like a fly as he took to the air, disappearing into the dark, hopefully out of reach.

With the light gone, he could hardly tell what was imminent pointy death and what was just a tree anyway.

There was nothing but stamping, shouting, and that cutting orange glare.

Then, the monster pulled two legs against its body and added a second light to the mix.

This light took the form of a swirling, bright blue mass of liquid energy between its spikes, which grew larger and larger with every passing second, the unmistakable sound of a charging Water Shuriken growing louder in turn as it took a far too familiar shape.

Shrugging off everything thrown at it, it released the shuriken directly at Kirby with a whoosh and a spray of glowing water, the impact knocking everything out of the puffball- From his breath to his ability to two important glowing rod chunks, everything.

With the ability lost, the squished and forgotten remains of the fruit disappeared.

Kirby landed with a squeak and made a break for a bouncing green star, the leaf decorating it's side fading quickly as it rattled away along the ground.

Another, significantly more _golden_ star ricocheted along the ground to land at Alph's feet.  
The head of the Star Rod.  
He scooped it up without a second thought, fingers doing little to stem the bright light streaming from its surface.

The star buzzed gently under his fingers, filling him with a comforting kind of warmth that lasted for a good five seconds before everything turned blindingly _orange,_ and a spike lowered itself into his vision, poised like some giant finger, ready for poking.

"Oh, shoot!"

A scandalized gasp come from somewhere to his left as an arrow thudded into the joint between tentacle and spike and Toony appeared on the scene.

"Did you just _swear?_ " The spike smashed into the ground a few feet off its mark, giving the pair enough time to run away, Toony shooting back over his shoulder as they went.

"No, of course not!" The orange spotlight followed them out of stabbing range, at which point it switched to rapidly firing barely charged Water Shuriken.

"I'm just saying," He said, the poorly-aimed projectiles splashing at their feet, "I wasn't gonna tell, I'm no snitch!"

With all the water being thrown around, it was actually getting easier to see- The clouds of dust in the air being weighed down with moisture. "That's very kind, but we have other problems right now!"

"I dunno, I think... This is actually helping?"

True to form, the monster was ignoring everything thrown at it in its furious attempts to hit them. Samus' gun blew hole after hole through its tentacles, which oozed great streams of liquid, Sonic dodging through the stamping spikes with simple ease, taking every opportunity to throw it off balance, making its shots swerve wildly.

Kirby…

Kirby grubbed through the ash a few meters away, leafy headdress firmly back in place.

Toony notched an arrow. "Hey, stay still. I'm gonna nail it in the eye."

"Er, sure." Alph stepped back as another watery projectile impacted at his feet "You're very calm about this."

"Eh, fight Ganon and everything else just turns into small-fry, you know?"

For a brief second, he flashed back to flinging Ganondorf off Final Destination with a gust jar "...Not really?"

"Eh, I guess you had to be there." Aiming with one eye closed, he released the arrow, "Boom! Bullseye!"

Alph squinted as the monster reeled. "You hit its leg."

"Yup!"

"I thought you were going for the eye?"

Toony shrugged, "Tomato, tomato. Potato, potato."

…

"...What's a 'po-tarr-to'?"

With an immense crash, the shot leg dropped off, landing spike first in the ground and almost giving Sonic a bold new foot piercing in the process.

This was finally enough to draw the monster's attention away from its glittery, star-shaped prize. It rumbled, blinding gaze falling to its feet, and started to rotate, wobbling precariously as the injured limbs swapped with the undamaged ones on the other side of the canyon.

With everything in place, it didn't move to attack.

The orange spotlight simply scanned the ground at its feet impatiently.

"...I'm gonna shoot it in the eye again."

"Wait, wait." Alph put out a hand, "Let's see what it's doing."

After a few short seconds of searching, the light focused on its dropped limb, and a spike came down to gently roll it out of the way. With the obstacle gone, the spear-like extremity stabbed at the ash underneath and dragged out Link's trophy, skewered through the hole in his back like a kebab.

In a single, swift motion, it plunged Link into its own body, Toony giving an indignant squark _"(I'm gonna shoot it in the eye again!"),_ as his older incarnation was swallowed up by the monster like Greninja before him.

It shuddered with another pulse of light as its remaining spikes started to change shape, becoming sleeker, lighter, shiner… Turning into giant, deadly, _swords._

 _...Shoot._

* * *

 _ **((Rip, Link Link. You were here so shortly and gone so soon.**  
_

 ** _...Because_** _ **it was necessary for the narrative.**_

 _ **Yeesh, this chapter, huh? It spewed out of control a bit... But I did my best, and while I'm not as happy as I'd like to be with it, I can't complete the story without posting it. That would be silly.**_

 _ **Forgetting that, check it out my dudes, cover art!**_

 _ **...By, er, me.**_

 _ **... *Cough***_

 ** _... A-Anyway, that's it from me, thank you for reading! If you liked it, gimme some feedback! And if you disliked it, also give me feedback! Can't fix problems I don't know about, after all._**

 ** _With that, I gotta get back to saving Hyrule. Breath of the Wild is... Breathtaking and at least 40% of the reasons why this took 3 months to finish._**

 ** _..._**

 ** _... PINKY, OUT!))_**


	7. Chapter 7

Toony's suddenly sustained fire caught its attention again, and the blinding eye-light swung back in their direction.

Maintaining that eye contact, less than three seconds passed before the monster started firing _sword beams._

Enormous, sliver arcs of energy lanced through the air towards them, slicing through the dust and whipping it into illuminated swirls and eddies as it passed.

The first shot went wide, crashing through the trees behind.

The rest did not.

Alph and Toon Link reacted... Accordingly.

 _"AAAHHHHH!"_

 ** _"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"_**

Running in circles and screaming counts as proper battlefield strategy, right?

"Hey! HEY! _OVER HERE!"_ Kirby's voice broke through the screaming and shooting and the orange light swept to the other side of the makeshift arena to focus in on him- The steady stream of attacks coming to a halt.

He held the Star Chunk above his head like a tiny, glittery beacon, granting needed respite to anyone that _happened_ to be running about, screaming their heads off.

The monster's illuminated glare practically burnt a hole in him, before it started firing off attacks in an attempt to make that very, very _literal_.

"Do something!" Kirby shrieked over the noise _"Distract it back!_ _ **Anything!"**_

Under Alph's fingers, the faint buzz emanating from the head of the Star Rod kicked up a notch, sending a strange warmth up his arms. Unprompted, he dived from behind the fallen tree he and Link had hidden- Er, _taken shelter_ behind, and thrust the star in the air.

"You forgot about **this!** "

The eye swung back around, gaze falling on Alph just in time for him to realise this may not have been the best idea.

But before he even had time to shield his eyes from the light, Kirby called its attention away again.

The beast quickly proved itself too stupid to pick a target, its attention ricocheting between the two like a ball across a tennis court as the players batted, well, shouted it around while Samus and Sonic tore through it's undefended legs like red hot laser blasts- And to a lesser extent, very fast hedgehogs- Through butter.

With a stilted wail, the monster's limbs finally collapsed. Its round body hit the ground with a nasty _crunch_ of chitin against rock, the whole thing rupturing as it bounced once, then toppled over the lip of the canyon.

Conveniently, it went down about the same time Alph's throat started to get sore.

Inconveniently- Something, somewhere, took notice of this particular plot development.

And it didn't like what it saw.

The ground trembled a little underfoot as Kirby ran to intercept Alph and Toony as they made their way over to the edge of the canyon, shoving his Star Chunk back into his mouth with a single swift movement.

Whatever he wanted to say was lost as the tremble turned into a tremor and the floor buckled under their feet, the puffball finding himself rolling the last meter before being stopped by Toony's knees.

The entire world groaned, Alph muttering out an "Again..?" Before everything abruptly _upended._

The floor went from 'decently flat' to 'vertical' in a matter of milliseconds- Sending everyone tumbling, bouncing between the remaining trees like balls in an enormous pinball machine, hurtling towards their doom.

They rolled for what felt like hours before just as fast as it had tilted in the first place, the earth slammed back down- The impact making the sky above ring eerily once again as everybody rolled to a dizzy stop.

Alph pulled himself back onto his shaking legs, grimacing at the new hairline cracks snaking over his view of the unfamiliar forest around them.

He'd smacked his helmet on more than a few things on the way down.

Kirby popped out of a pile of ash absolutely no worse for wear- While Toony took a few minutes to recover before climbing laboriously of the tree he'd landed in.

Samus and Sonic, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.

"Everyone okay?" Kirby asked, chipper as always.

"No," Toony groaned as he lowered himself to the ground, "I swear, I broke something..." He reached behind his back, and eventually pulled a couple of snapped arrows out of his quiver. "Aw, man."

"I've been better," Alph sighed. "What even was that?"

Kirby thrust a paw in the air, hopping up and down in excitement. "I know this one!" He chirped "It's a classic evil trick! We've been separated from our allies and we don't know where we are!" The puffball proceeded to inflate and balloon up into the branches above, landing briefly to call back down. "I'm gonna go get my bearings, this is like villain 101!"

Get his bearings? Now, that's an idea. Alph pulled out his Kop-pad, tapping Link's arm to get his attention. "If we can connect to the Drake, I should be able to pinpoint us on my map." The screen showed a much greener world than the one they currently stood in, buildings, trees, rivers and on-site stadiums still intact, partially covered by a flashing error message complaining about 'invalid coordinates.'

Toony hummed in thought "Nice idea, but how are we supposed to do that if we don't know where we are?"

"Some landmarks must have survived." Alph tapped the screen "The Drake is parked in this field, which is located next to a river… In the north. So, if we find water, We're on the right track."

"Right, right, what about the other rivers?"

"… We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Link drew in air sharply to argue back but shut his mouth as Kirby dropped out of the air, crowing triumphantly: "I don't know where we are!"

Toony let his breath hiss through his teeth. "Thanks, Kirby. Did you see _anything_?"

"Yeah," Kirby nodded "There's some kinda tower not too far from here. Didn't recognise it though."

"Which way?" Alph piped up, turning as Kirby pointed… He glanced at the compass in the corner of his screen… West. "Maybe we can find something there."

The tower turned out to be less than ten minutes away.

It loomed out of the fog as they approached, standing crooked in the ground, the ash at its base disturbed like it had just been set down by some giant creature. Disturbingly, the tower clearly wasn't designed to be standalone. Bricks and wooden beams hung off one side where it had once been attached to a larger building- The wooden door swinging gently in air two stories up driving the point home even further.

Close up, the walls were hewn from rough stone bricks- Some of which had wickedly ugly faces carved into them.

Familiar ugly faces.

"This must belong to Bowser," Alph mused, walking slowly around the base "But… How did it get here?"

"Same way we did, I guess." Toony Link's voice was slightly muffled by the stone between them "Ah! There's a door here!"

Alph jogged over, finding Toony crouched by a thick wooden door, clearly the main entrance to this building.

It was on the side of the tower that slanted into the ground, leaving the door half buried in the ash.

Toony kicked the thick wood impatiently "I tried pulling on it, but I think it's jammed."

"Let me help." Alph put his Kop-pad away and grabbed the handle. It took the form of a large metal loop that was clearly designed for much bigger hands, leaving plenty of room for the two of them to grab it and start tugging.

And tugging.

And _tugging_.

They pulled at the door until both Alph and Link were puffing and gasping with effort.

"Come… On!" Toony put one foot against the wall for extra leverage as he pulled "It's gotta move!"

"It's…It's…. Useless!" Alph released the handle and flopped back into the ash "There must- Must be some r-rocks buried at the base of the frame…. We can dig them up… In just a second…"

"Ugh!" Toony smashed the handle back against the wood in disgust. "It must be locked. Let's look for a key."

"Why would the key be around here? If someone locked it then… They'd have it with them?"

" _Listen._ " Link grumbled, "There's _always_ a key nearby."

Alph stood back up out of the ash. "But that doesn't make sense!"

Before an argument could start, the door opened.

It swung… Inwards. With Kirby on the other side. "Hey, what are you two shouting about?"

"N-Nothing." Toony bundled past Kirby, "How'd you get in?"

"Flew." Kirby held the door for Alph has he stepped in with a quiet 'Thanks', "There's not much in here though, looks like it was some kinda store room."

Jumbled piles of crates populated the room, each stamped with a deep red image of Bowser's face on all sides. Most of the crates were smashed and spilling their contents on the floor, clearly shaken about by whatever force had ripped a lone tower from a castle and flung it elsewhere.

The broken boxes spewed mostly electrical components, wires and bolts, along with replacement parts for the clown car.

"Guys, check this out." Toony's voice came muffled from halfway inside a crate. This one wasn't broken, it had been opened- The lid pried haphazardly off and thrown to the side. "Tournament items!"

"No way!" Kirby made it over there first, squeezing into the crate past Toony's head for a proper look, "He's not supposed to have these!"

Alph peered over their shoulders, shoving his beacon over the lip of the crate to light the inside an eery blue. "Careful! He might have tampered with those…"

"Who _cares?_ " Toon Link cried, stuffing his pockets with whatever he could fit "We need these!"

"Wait- At least take something useful!" Alph yelped as Toony pulled a bedraggled looking Mr Saturn (Painted obnoxiously with Bowser's logo) and started stuffing the poor thing in his bag, "What are you even going to do with that?"

"Dunno."

"Guys," Kirby pushed the two out of the way, securing the crate for himself. "I got this." With a sharp inhale, he pulled everything inside into his mouth. "Now we can carry everything!" Kirby smiled widely, clearly proud of his quick thinking; Before reaching deeply into his mouth with a paw and digging about as if he were searching through a pocket, before pulling a gleaming home-run bat from the darkness "Let's swap, Alph."

"Oh, good idea." Alph handed over his wooden bat, which was already worn and cracked from everything they'd been through already, watching as it disappeared into Kirby's maw. "What are you going to do with it?"

The puffball shrugged. "I'll think of something."

Alph found himself looking over the battlements of the unstable tower as the other two scrambled about trying to scrounge up dinner below.

He'd intended to overlook the landscape and pick out landmarks against the Kop-pad's map to figure out where they were, but the grip of night strangled those plans where they stood- Blanketing the landscape with a darkness so thick he could barely see beyond his little circle of blue light, a fresh snow of ash filling his vision with illuminated motes and lowering visibility even further.

With nothing else to do, Alph started to ping the Drake, hoping to awaken the ship from afar; And when that failed, he set the Kop-pad to record, stood it gently on a parapet, and spoke quietly into the night.

"This is Alph, engineer of the S.S Drake. Whoever's listening, I'm travelling with Toon Link and Kirby; We have survived Dark Matter's attacks, and we're working towards driving it back by collecting the shattered pieces of the Star Rod. If you're hearing this, please, contact me! We need all the help we can get. This message repeats." Satisfied, Alph set the Kop-pad to broadcast. He'd let it run over night and check for responses in the morning.

Already dreaming about a juicy fruit dinner, Alph turned and started to make his way back towards the trapdoor into the tower.

…

But… Did Bowser even eat fruit?

Surely, he did. Not even a monster would go without such delicacies as a Sunseed Berry, or even an unbearably sour Searing Acidshock.

…Oh, but what if he didn't? What if Bowser stocked his larder with such inedible things as vegetables? Or meat?

Alph found his footsteps quickening as terrible thoughts made their way unbidden into his mind, of being so hungry and without real food that he would resort to _vegetables_ of all things!

The idea was beyond belief, and Alph found himself almost fearing what he'd find his friends eating inside as he broke into a sprint for the ladder down and successfully dropped his tablet all the way to the bottom floor as a muffled scream of pure fear rose from the woods and jolted any other thoughts firmly out of place as a familiar worry set in.

 _"It's dark."_ Whispered the part of his brain that had never truly left the Pikmin Planet. _"And someone's been left behind."_

* * *

 **(( Hewwo?**

 **I'm back! I'm alive!**

 **It's been a year or so, huh? Time flies. Gonna be honest, I didn't expect to return to this. I was having Issues when I started this, and I was writing to avoid doing... Well, anything.**

 **But I'm good now! Yay! And I thought to myself, man, I did enjoy writing my fic. I should keep doing this.**

 **So here I am :3**

 **Please enjoy this short chapter while I get back into the swing of writing. The first 1000 words were written in 2017, and the rest in the last month, so apologies for any difference in quality! I haven't written for fun in a year.**

 **More fic incoming to a website near you (Though maybe not very soon haha)**

 **Pinky out. :3c))**


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